There´s been a lot, and I mean a lot, of talk around iPad and it´s Retina Display. How it will demand too large of files that will quickly fill up the storage, possibly melt down and ruin your life as we know it. I therefor asked a magazine on how they would manage this.
I´m not a big fan writing about what everyone else is writing, but seeing that the awesome magazine Katachi is located right here in Oslo I jumped on the bandwagon and asked for their opinion.
In question on what their general thoughts on the Retina Display, they responded:
“On a general basis, the introduction of the retina display will increases the size of many of the files up to four times … We believe however that the new iPad is a fantastic evolution, because it brings the visual quality of the publications up to a level that competes with print.”
“That said, many publishers will have to change how they produce their iPad magazines. People have neither time nor the willingness to download huge data files. It also eats up hard drive space. It would be bad if people stop buying magazines on the iPad because they believe they don’t have enough space on their iPad”.
So with understanding of the problem, Katachi went about how they would solve the issue and how their solution is quite unique compared to some competitors (*cough* Adobe Digital Publishing *cough*)
“This problem makes Origami Engine (our publishing tool) really come into its own, since we use actual page layout that is object-based, live text based and will soon include vector based graphics”.
I find it quite odd that other publishing tools wouldn’t use live text – a no brainer in my head. Speed has always been an issue for me on iPad magazines. Being a owner of iPad 1 and not 2, I may have to blame myself, but some magazines just seem (and probably are) so damn heavy and slow.
“Our goal has been to minimize file size from the very beginning. The first edition of Katachi was 275MB. Our pages can be between 30-80% less than most other publishing tools. The smallest page in the first edition was 70k (Barcelona-page).”
Maybe one key feature can be the use of different files as Katachi “will next week also support vector graphics (SVG), which will significantly minimize file sizes.”
Thanks to Katachi for taking their time for this interview.
