Multi-Use Documents: The Role of the Publisher

Publishers now expect a variety of electronic files from the typesetter, both for publishing, and for archiving. And yet, the publishing industry, by and large, still follows the traditional “manuscript/edit/typeset/proofread/print” approach. The process is still essentially paper-based. The typesetting is also geared primarily towards paper output. I suggest that we are in need of radical changes to these procedures so that files can be used to produce output on any medium, including paper, and I believe that these changes will benefit all concerned— authors, publishers, and typesetters. And clearly TEX is an ideal medium to hold the definitive text in modern typesetting. Not only can it be directly edited by the author, but it can produce every type of output required directly. These include paper, PDF, SGML, HTML, XML, etc. Recent changes in typesetting author