In the past, we’ve told you about KonaPDF – a way of creating low
resolution PDFs automatically from QuarkXPress via Acrobat Distiller.
Its benefits were twofold:
1) all those Quark Print settings – so easy for a Mac operator to get wrong
or overlook – are set automatically, without user interaction. 2) batch
output: KonaPDF operated on a folder of Quark files, outputting each page
as a PostScript file and placing these in an Acrobat watched folder for
Distiller to convert to PDF straight away.
Now there’s Hikona – it does the same, but at high resolution with oversize
pages to accommodate registration marks, crops and trims.
We think Hikona will be of interest to any publishing company that makes
high-resolution, press-ready PDFs from QuarkXPress 6.
All the Quark Print settings – resolution, half-screen, page oversize,
registration marks, offset, bleed, orientation etc are ‘hard-wired’ into
the code of Hikona itself. The user simply selects a folder of Quark files,
then chooses a Distiller watched folder, and the PostScript files and PDFs
are created automatically.
The final quality of the PDFs, of course, will depend on the end user’s
Acrobat Distiller settings.
Hikona is intended to be used for CMYK 4-colour process print jobs. The
program will output composite CMYK single page .PS files from all the Quark
documents in a selected folder.
It is bespoke software – each buyer supplies a list of print job
requirements (resolution, page size etc) and these are hard-wired into the
program code.
Hikona is an Applescript program that works with QuarkXPress 6, Acrobat
Distiller 6 or 7, on Intel Macs or PowerPC Macs, using Mac OS X 10.3
(Panther) or 10.4 (Tiger)
It is not tested with QuarkXPress 7 or Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard).
Hikona costs =A335 (British pounds)
=46or more information, go to (http://www.konasoftware.co.uk)