O’Reilly Media is using this year’s DBW to launch a new online service aimed at streamlining the workflow in digital publishing. O’Reilly is launching a private beta for Atlas, a new Web-based publishing platform and authoring tool that allows publishers to “push a single button” and output a file for any format—including a PDF for offset printing.
Pascal Honscher, O’Reilly’s v-p of corporate development, describes Atlas as a “software as a service,” venture that is based on the HTML5 standard and calls it an effort to “automate the workflow.” O’Reilly is testing the service now with several “large publishers” and is inviting publishers to try it during DBW. Honscher says he expects the service to go to a public beta later in the first quarter. “Now we’re offering early access to get feedback on Atlas.”
He describes Atlas as Web-based platform and online authoring tool. Atlas is open source and, he says, features a visual editing environment, “you can see all your content.”
Honschher says Atlas is the product O’Reilly’s created to streamline its own workflow. “It encapsulates O’Reilly’s 25 years of digital publishing,” and their ongoing efforts to “make the hard stuff easier to use.” He says Atlas will ultimately streamline a publisher’s workflow, cut some costs, and offer an output for a PDF file for offset print, unlike other conversion technology. “Most platforms don’t go to print and print is still a big part of our publishing platform.”
