Version 4.0 of XEditPro, DiacriTech’s cloud-based SaaS editorial and production platform, underwent a major architecture upgrade last year. A downloadable option, for instance, was created based on a client’s request. “The on-demand widget encrypts and decrypts content on the fly as the user scrolls through it,” says executive v-p A.R.M. Gopinath. “It is most useful for staff and clients who are still in WFH mode and do not want, or need, to be online at all times to access or work on the platform.”
The latest iteration also addresses one major issue that publishers grapple with: fonts. Only fonts preapproved by the publishing clients will now be used for their respective projects, and a font report will be generated for compliance purposes.
Customizing content from multiple titles within the XEditPro system is also possible and easy. “One client has been using, and benefitting from, XEditPro’s capability to customize their content for the past three years,” Gopinath says. “We have integrated XEditPro with their digital delivery systems, thus enabling their products to get to market faster and at lower cost with little fuss. Floating bars, customized functions, and other cosmetic changes, for instance, make the process faster and the user experience more fluid and friendly. The enhanced XEditPro features further facilitate collaborative content editing while allowing contributors to add chunks of content as well as attachments that they can refer to at later stages of the process.”
School and university course content and assessments with related HTML5 assets, audio, and video files can now be created within XEditPro. “The files can be populated directly from XEditPro into popular LMS platforms such as Moodle and Canvas using APIs [Application Programming Interfaces] or the Common Cartridge export option,” Gopinath says. “These features and enhancements are aimed at making the publishing process easier and faster while generating high-quality products.”
Then there was the launch last September of Eazy Author, an authoring platform that streamlines and simplifies the manuscript-writing process. Eazy Author’s creation was driven by the twin goals of meeting the rising global demand for OA publications and assisting authors with their OA content. “This full-fledged platform lets the author focus on just the content without the fuss of tedious formatting or technical know-how,” Gopinath says. “It enables collaborative authoring with tools for file sharing, reviewing, and commenting. The WYSIWYG equation editor makes entering equations super easy, and there are ready-to-use templates to quickly output content in different formats, including EPUB, HTML, XML, PDF, JATS, NIMAS, and DAISY. Several templates designed to meet OA publishers’ requirements are also available. Authors can prepare and publish on their own, as well as use this platform to kickstart the publishing process.”
