Editions   North America | Europe | Magazine

WhatTheyThink

Pageflex Debuts Mpower 4 at On Demand

Press release from the issuing company

ON DEMAND 2003 CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--April 7, 2003-- Pageflex, a pioneer and leader of Web-top publishing, today debuted the beta release of Mpower version 4 at the On Demand exposition in New York. Pageflex also announced that Mpower 4 is being released this week for beta testing at select customer sites. Mpower has long enabled sophisticated personalization of highly designed documents. The new release will extend that power to variable-length documents, providing automated custom publishing capabilities never before available. The variable-length document support in Mpower 4 provides the full range of functionality needed to produce customized documents with variable-length content while automatically paginating each unique document and maintaining document design integrity. Features that enable Mpower to meet the standards necessary for truly automated variable-length, variable-data pagination include master pages, automatic page insertion based on text container overflow, variable page insertion based on variable values, dynamic filler page insertion for signatures, automatic page and section numbering, header and footer controls, and automatic table of contents generation. Also supported is "stitching in" of multi-page PDF files and Pageflex documents on a variable basis, also with fully paginated results. The kinds of variable-length customized documents Pageflex expects the early adopters of Mpower 4 to produce are design-intensive pieces customized to individuals. This might include documents such as travel itineraries, custom multi-product brochures, cover letters, and proposals. In the case of a travel itinerary, for example, a user might visit a web site, book a vacation and based on the traveler's destination, length of stay, budget and interests, a custom travel itinerary could be produced. In addition to basic itinerary and destination information, such a variable-length piece could include coupons, luggage tags, tickets and so forth, all customized to a particular traveler on a particular trip. "Pageflex is known as the industry leader in flexible, variable data publishing solutions," said David Frenkel, Pageflex General Manager. "Our customers are at the leading edge of automated, personalization technology and are poised to take advantage of the new opportunities possible with variable-length customized publishing." Pageflex customers enrolled in the Mpower 4 beta test program include National Print and Packaging, Spire, Wallace, and West Group, among others. "We are excited to be a part of the beta testing for Mpower 4 because we feel it's important to stay current with Mpower," reported Tom Middleton of National Print and Packaging. "We anticipate continuing to offer advanced features and functionality to our customers. Mpower is integral in helping us achieve our goal of delivering unique customized printing solutions." "Variable-data printing has become the cornerstone of our business," said Brian Dorman of Spire about his interest in the Mpower 4 beta test program. "We have a long-term relationship with Pageflex, and are eager to work with Pageflex in order to remain on the leading edge of this technology. At Spire, we plan to leverage the latest Mpower functionality, as soon as possible, to open up new market opportunities for our business." Mpower 4 also introduces Pageflex Studio, providing a single, extensible, design and project development environment. This powerful application provides all the tools for designing flexible templates and applying variability criteria, combining functionality previously provided in the separate Pageflex applications Designer and Producer and adding significant user interface and productivity enhancements. Mpower 4 will also ship with a native PDF driver based on Adobe's PDF Library 5.0, with complete support for OpenType fonts and Asian and Eastern European character sets. Also included are a native EPS output driver, additional color graphics and imaging support, and over 50 other features and enhancements. A complete list of Mpower 4 features is available by request from Pageflex. Pageflex anticipates completion of the Mpower 4 beta test program later in Q2. General release of the product will immediately follow.