A trusted partner for learning across India

When a student in India opens a chemistry textbook or a guide to study arithmetic for competitive examinations, they are likely learning from a book prepared by the teams at Chhaya Prakashani. India has one of the world’s largest school systems, with over 250 million students attending government and privately managed schools. As one of India’s leading academic publishers, Chhaya Prakashani creates a wide range of K-12 and college textbooks and manuals, as well as career guides and exam preparation materials.

Since 1976, the company has helped students in rural and urban areas across the country achieve academic success through quality, visually rich, and easy-to-understand materials in multiple languages. To make learning broadly accessible, Chhaya Prakashani teams create materials in multiple languages, including Bengali, one of the most widely spoken languages across India.

Creating a single textbook requires managing a lot of detailed content involving close collaboration among authors, editors, and production teams. With the publisher’s focus on science and math textbooks and manuals, production teams must also accurately typeset equations, chemical formulas, charts, and graphics over many pages.

“We are a trusted resource for millions of students because we’re committed to constantly improving the quality of our materials. As we looked for better ways to develop and publish our books, we discovered Adobe FrameMaker. It’s been a vital part of how we work for more than 10 years,” says Sutanu Ghosh, Head of Marketing and Support at Chhaya Prakashani. “By using Adobe FrameMaker, we have a full toolbox to help ensure speed, accuracy, and consistency with every publication.”

Developing more efficient workflows based on subject expertise

When assembling a title, Chhaya Prakashani editorial and desktop publishing teams work hand-in-hand to develop material and then typeset and assemble it into a complete textbook. Using FrameMaker, Chhaya Prakashani has refined efficient workflows by allowing team members to work within their strengths.

Editorial and desktop publishing teams are grouped according to subject matter, with content creators and editors developing specialized expertise in areas like physics, geography, chemistry, mathematics, and humanities. After content creators, which include teachers who work with the publisher, complete a manuscript, the editorial team for that subject area will convert it into a FrameMaker file. Some content creators even mail hard copies of their books to the editors, making the ability to scan documents and collaborate in FrameMaker essential to meeting publication schedules.

With an average textbook for primary school students having between 100-125 pages and those for high school textbooks reaching thousands of pages, small editorial teams can split large documents into manageable segments through FrameMaker. Working in shorter sections, editors can seamlessly leave content corrections, add or adjust equations and symbols, and perform line edits before combining files back into a master folder for the book.

“Through FrameMaker, we can easily organize and edit large volumes of files and documents, from book sections and chapters, down to appendices,” says Ghosh. “Having a simpler process for structuring and editing content lets us focus on quality, which has given us a competitive edge in the academic publishing market.”

Automated typesetting for equations and multiple languages

After editorial ensures that content is accurate and engaging, it’s time for desktop publishers to help shape the look of a title and get it ready for publishing. Just as editorial teams have their areas of expertise, desktop publishing teams specialize in typesetting and formatting books in specific subject matter, with certain team members focusing on material that requires equations, charts, or maps.

Working in FrameMaker, desktop publishers can automatically typeset equations, maps, and other technical symbols over hundreds of pages at a time. Though chemistry equations and structures are particularly challenging to format, Chhaya Prakashani desktop publishers can easily arrange these equations on the page by using the equations panel within FrameMaker.

Clicking on the equations button inside the document window, publishers can create inline equations or give equations their own paragraphs. Once a desktop publisher creates the form for an equation in FrameMaker, they can quickly populate it with the math components by typing them in or clicking on the best options in the Equations panel.

Most numbers must be typeset in Roman font, even as Chhaya Prakashani desktop publishers deliver texts in Bengali, which is comprised of its own unique alphabet. When typesetting Bengali, desktop publishers must be aware of appropriately spacing different glyphs and vowel markers to preserve the accuracy of a passage. Through FrameMaker, desktop publishers access a Bengali font that Adobe developed with a Bengali script expert to seamlessly and reliably repeat the right glyphs and spacing over thousands of pages.

“Typesetting a book in Bengali comes with distinct challenges that we’ve overcome using FrameMaker. When we can automate the process of laying out the Adobe Bengali font, we save countless hours of work,” says Yugesh Kumar, Head of Corporate IT. “With FrameMaker, we can keep this kind of intricate, highly involved typesetting in-house, resulting in significant cost savings. The heightened efficiency allows us to successfully create 5,000-6,000 pages in multiple languages, every month.”

Making the printing process smoother and more cost-effective

Making a book visually compelling by including detailed maps, descriptive charts, as well as illustrations and artwork, is also key to helping students understand complex subject matter. As typesetters accurately incorporate different languages, equations, and technical symbols into the text, graphic designers on the desktop publishing team enrich the pages with illustrations and artwork that they can easily export to FrameMaker.

Native integrations between FrameMaker and Adobe Creative Cloud enable graphic designers to work within Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, and Adobe InDesign. Illustrator and Photoshop are especially useful in creating maps for geography textbooks.

Once Chhaya Prakashani editorial and desktop publishing teams have finalized the process of editing, typesetting, designing and formatting, and proofreading a text in FrameMaker, they convert it to PDF for printing. In FrameMaker, desktop publishers can automate the process of inputting CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, and key/black) color values into the content, graphics, and images in a book—since CMYK is a mainstay of commercial printing, automating this part of the printing process has helped Chhaya Prakashani save costs and improve productivity.

“Over our long relationship with FrameMaker, we’ve been increasingly impressed with how FrameMaker captures the CMYK color model so perfectly, every time,” says Kumar. “We don’t have to stop the presses to make adjustments on our end. Once we give our FrameMaker files to the printer, we know the process will be done right, the first time.”

Chhaya Prakashani’s longstanding use of FrameMaker allows the publisher to continuously create a variety of titles to reach a broad range of learners, from the secondary student first learning periodic tables to a college student preparing for a chemistry exam.

“With FrameMaker, we can develop and publish titles that get people excited about learning. This is the type of value that has sustained our use of Adobe FrameMaker for over a decade,” says Ghosh. “As education evolves, we will continue to rely on FrameMaker to create the best books for students across India.”

“Standardizing a production platform is always a business critical decision for any organization. In this matter, we have always received support and encouragement from Mr. Saurabh Mittal, Group CFO, SChand Group, and Mr. Prateek Dhanuka, CEO, Chhaya Prakashani. I am thankful to them for the liberty they have allowed and the faith they have reposed in us,” adds Ghosh.

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