As the old STA newspaper boys can tell- the P.Ink episode was an interesting experiment in (failed) investment.
[1994] Can a German Macintosh developer find happiness with an Israeli imaging company after its disastrous liaison with an American magazine publisher who installed a Frenchman to manage the relationship?
No, it’s not a soap opera, it’s pre-press musical chairs. Following a couple of years of Time Magazine Group’s holding the North American rights to P.INK — the Macintosh-based front-end system developed in Germany — and about a year of negotiations, Scitex bought into P.INK (25% equitty) last winter. The first iteration of the Scitex-influenced P.INK will be shown at NEXPO. We have always believed that P.INK had a lot of potential and weren’t satisfied with the direction in which the Americans pointed the product. But under the new relationship, the literature certainly looks good. P.Ink Press, the publishing system based on Quark XPress that uses an SQL database, seems to have overcome many of its previous deficits and appears to be on its way to becoming a solid product; P.Ink Media, an archiving and recycling system, is intended to hold full-page images as well as text and photographs. All this, and Scitex’s high-end color systems, page transmission systems and the 18-wheel truck (click on the picture to see details) where nine people will build live news pages every day.
Source: THE COLE PAPERS, July 1994
