Electronic Publishing on CdRom

In the past few years, the whole concept of publishing has undergone an enormous transformation. Publishers are no longer limited to paper and ink. Electronic publications can now incorporate text, images, sound, video, and interactive games and simulations. And publishing has become a more democratic activity with the explosive growth of both the Internet and CDROM technology, more and more people are publishing their own titles.There has been a huge growth in the CDROM installed base and the market for CDROM titles. There are tens of millions of CDROM drives installed, and the coming Digital Video Disc (DVD) format will bring many more. CDROMs have enormous capacity, and they are compact, durable, and inexpensive to manufacture, store, and ship. Were now seeing everything from games to educational products to reference and technical documents being delivered on CDROM.This book looks at the many kinds of electronic publications being produced today. Although it focuses on CDROM, the discussion is also relevant to publishing on the World Wide Web. Electronic Publishing on CDROM describes examples and alternatives for the design, authoring, manufacturing, marketing, and distribution of CDROMs. It covers electronic document authoring systems (e.g., Adobes Acrobat, Macromedias Director, Apples HyperTalk, and more). It discusses traditional and emerging document standards and formats (e.g., SGML, HTML, and Java), as well as physical disc standards (e.g., ISO 9660, HFS). It also provides detailed information on the costs of CDROM publishing projects staff, manufacturing, and phases of development. In addition, it includes an extensive list of resources and ahelpful glossary and bibliography.Provided with this book is a a CDROM full of resources, including the text of portions of the book, in both Acrobat PDF and HTML form; freely available software for document authoring and browsing; demos of CDROM titles of various kinds; frequently asked question (FAQ) listings about CDROM publishing, data compression, different types of file formats (image, audio, and font formats), JPEG, MPEG, and Java; and much more.This book is divided into four parts:Part I, Overview of Electronic Publishing, contains the following:Chapter 1, Electronic Publications, describes what electronic publications are and why they have become so popular. It discusses the special qualities of electronic documents, touches on a number of emerging technologies, and looks briefly at intellectual property issues for electronic publishing.Chapter 2, CDROM and Online Publishing, examines the pros and cons of publishing on CDROM and on the Internet. It also looks at hybrid products that take advantage of both publishing models.Chapter 3, Two Electronic Titles, profiles two very different kinds of CDROM titles. Isaac Asimovs The Ultimate Robot, is a professionally produced, mass market edutainment product, which blends education and entertainment. The electronic version of the Association of Computing Machinerys (ACMs) SIGGRAPH groups conference proceedings is a volunteerproduced technical title.Part II, CDROM Development, contains the following:Chapter 4, Developing a CDROM, provides an overview of the CDROM development process, from initial product planning through final production of the CDROM image. It discusses the staffing that isrequired for most development projects, and provides cost estimates for several different types of projects.Chapter 5, Designing Electronic Documents, discusses a variety of design issues for CDROMs, in areas of overall title navigation, graphics, user interface, sound, digital video, and software.Chapter 6, Authoring Systems, examines what makes a good authoring system for electronic documents and looks at a number of examples of systems being used today, including Director, HyperCard, Acrobat, GainMomentum, Media Tool, and HTML.Chapter 7, Electronic Document Standards, summarizes a variety