Abstract EN:

During the two last decades, manufacturers of graphic workstations have been working hard in order to design and market development platforms with reliable and high performing architectures enabling both modelisation and processing of numerical reprography. Until recently, a few big manufacturers developing specific solutions, more reliable than efficient, shared the prepress market. However, more and more software houses are choosing the conceptual and then technical design of different prepress systems based on standard hardware collecting the last available electronic and programming technologies. Every passing year, with the replacement of one workstation with one of greater performance, it becomes rather obvious that the future of the prepress industry definitely belongs to this kind of equipment, cheaper than a dedicated hardware but also and above all, more flexible, i. E. Upgradable, for adaptation to new technological innovations. However, until today, none of these new architectures has ever been at the center of an experimental site within a traditional repro house. Such a development seems to be useful, even unavoidable in order to define precisely the possible evolution of those new technologies which offer, as we will see, real productive useroriented solutions. The work described in this document has led to the realisation of a system which went from an experimental level to a productive one as soon as September 1991. A first part locates the problematic of digital page layout and outlines the state of the art in the current technologies involved on the market. The second part of this work consists in a non-exhaustive analysis of specific tools to be integrated within a digital production line for the prepress industry. A third part presents the conceptual study as well as the experimental evolution of the production tool resulting from the needs of a "digital" printing industry. As a conclusion, we present a synthesis of the work accomplished together with a critical analysis proposing an evolution of the created configuration.