Forever after this will be known the time when everything changed. For almost this entire decade, pundits have declared each year in turn as the year that true convergence of media would happen, or that e-commerce would become both real and profitable. For most of that time, the Seybold Publishing Seminars, founded by Jonathan Seybold 25 years ago to help incorporate computer technology in publishing, have been working toward a unified notion of publishing incorporating all media.

In the last five years, the show had been accused of abandoning traditional print for Web publishing. The problem was exacerbated by the bi-coastal nature of publishing these days: the original San Francisco-based seminars had become much more Web and computer oriented; the Boston show was known for addressing "big iron" -- printing presses and traditional print and prepress issues, such as producing true 4-color from RGB design software.

"It's About Publishing"

With a determined vision only a prophet could maintain, Jonathan Seybold always had declared, "It's not about the Web; it's not about print; it's about publishing." September's Seybold San Francisco 21st Century Publishing Seminar, now owned by Softbank, finally began to deliver on Jonathan's vision, as several of the industry's major players began to show a better understanding of electronic delivery's place in the publishing business.

Though each day of the show had newsworthy announcements, two especially stood out: first, Xerox and Adobe's joint press conference launching Xerox's Content Guard with Adobe Acrobat Web Buy and PDF Merchant; and second, Microsoft Corp's announcement of a new e-book Reader software that will run on any Windows PC. Though each was significant, together they change the landscape for publishers that distribute books electronically.

Adobe president and chairman Chuck Geschke described the Internet delivery of audio files as garnering a lot of attention lately, threatening the $12 billion audio industry. "Trade and educational publishing, however," he continued, "combine for about $25 billion annually, and business-related publishing generates more than $36 billion per year, yielding a total market of more than $61 billion."

Geschke explained how Xerox's Content Guard, facilitated by Adobe's customer-side Web Buy software and e-retailer-side PDF Merchant, would answer all the basic objections publishers have had to Web distribution. CG will manage intellectual property rights and security at the publisher's computer, while Web Buy and PDF Merchant guarantee easy browsing, selection and payment.

Meanwhile, Dick Brass, Microsoft Corp.'s v-p of technology development, announced Microsoft Reader, software designed to display electronic books on ordinary desktop and laptop PCs. A significant component of MS Reader will be ClearType, Microsoft's technology to sharpen the image of text on any color screen.

"The poor reading experience provided by a typical PC or notebook display has been the biggest obstacle to the widespread adoption of e-books," Brass noted. MS Reader will make on-screen reading much more comparable to reading on paper.

In a single move, Microsoft changed the e-book industry's emphasis from hardware to software. Between Microsoft Reader, based on the Open eBook format standard, and available for any PC, and Adobe Acrobat, which enables cross-platform reading, the issue has become, What special service can an e-book hardware device provide to justify its very high price?

Flexibility Is More Important

Tim Gill, chief technology officer for design-software producer Quark, announced a new application to translate documents in QuarkXpress format to HTML/XML, or vice versa. Called Avenue.Quark, the program really spelled the death of Quark's Web design tool Immedia. Gill admitted as much, allowing that the company would still release Immedia, but it is two years late, and it is "more important to have the flexibility to takes files from HTML/XML to Quark-for-Print, and Quark to HTML." The change this represents cannot be overestimated, both to Quark as a producer of tools for publishing, and its clients, who will soon be able to move back and forth easily from print production to Web design.

In hardware, Steve Jobs, interim CEO of Apple Computer, proved once again that San Francisco is Macintosh country, drawing an overflow crowd of 7000 for the introduction of the company's newest PowerMac, the G4. The G4 is revolutionary, using true 128-bit parallel processing to quadruple graphics processing power, which Jobs said is a must for Apple's next goal: Internet TV. G4s running at 400 megahertz will be available within a month for about $1600 without monitor.

The next Seybold Seminars is planned for February 7“11, 2000, in the Hynes Center in Boston.