Print Now ( issue 4 2004) includes a quote from Lance O'Connell, Heidelberg's UK Manager for Prinect and pre-press products.

"JDF was a hot topic at drupa. it is now becoming a commercial reality and by 2006 automated workflows will have become an industry standard."

This is one of the first signs that JDF is actually happening. It is tempting to believe this is a reasonable assumption about 2006. Once the software is part of an internet speed then this makes a lot of sense.

It will be interesting to see how much communication happens online between print shows. For JDF to become an industry standard before 2006 there will have to be a lot of web browsing for some print companies to catch up woth the "early adopters". In the UK there will probably be two shows as Digital Print World before IPEX. Apparently these will not include litho workflows but actually a digital workflow could be much the same. this blog and the site at www.atford.co.uk will concentrate on the implications on JDF for litho, still the largest part of UK print on current information.

I have updated the www.atford site with a simplified map of IPEX 2006. This shows the piazza as the centre of a loop round the 'heavy metal' part. I think the software part will develop through the web anyway. Such an event is about how JDF works with litho and finishing.

There is a slideshow at Acrobat services dotcom. Adobe Album comes with some suitable lounge music. Closed Loop - Open Piazza.

I am continuing a campaign to persuade Printweek to conside John Cunningham for their 100 list of influential people in UK print. Somehow Adobe and UK print do not overlap that much.

Adobe have announced the release of Designer for forms and other server products.

The report at PDFzone includes a statement from Sydney Sloan, product marketing group manager for server products. The guidance is that these products are intended for organisations with above 500 users. "We're targetting Fortune 500 type companies."

It seems to me that JDF and the print industry do not really fit in with this picture. At drupa there was almost no promotion for PDF Jobready. There have been some reports of a concept around JDF tickets in InDesign and Acrobat. But there is almost no information about how this might work with server software.

The PDFzone article mentions a possible "$100,000 price tag ($200,000 for the Cadillac bundle)" for the "Intelligent Document Platform’s process-management components". Most print companies employ less than twenty people and have no IT department.

So the original idea of the portable job ticket is not going to work out as first imagined. There will be JDF data as well as PDF for copy. But there are many other ways of sending XML data.

Possibly over time there will be a different price level for PDF server software. There may be more information about implementations of PDF Jobready and JDF in InDesign / Acrobat. But other approaches seem more likely in the near future.

drupa 2004 is more or less over

only now do I find out that Andy Tribute has been doing a special blog at

http://www.attributes.co.uk/drupa

Forget this blog. Andy Tribute has been there the whole fortnight.

He seems to have liked Print City more over time.

I have put some photos in a PDF (2 meg) from official sources so the quality is ok

Freehand is still the illustration choice for PC Pro. I have caught up on most hard copy reading. I'm still aware of the web in the background. Macromedia appear not to spend too much energy on exhibitions in real space. Maybe adobe are uncertain whether they should beat an vent such as drupa or not. I still thjink it strange that PDF Jobready was not promoted as far as I could tell.

News in Printweek shows that JDF is having a real effect quite soon.

Taylor Bloxham in Leicester are integrating Creo and Tharsten, as shown at the JDF Parc.

Barney Cox has an extended article on JDF in pre-press and production. He repeats the view from Tim Williams in a previous article - the early implementations will come from magazine printers working with publishers. The article reports on Wyndham Heron and Stephens & George.

The Digital Ad Lab started to look at JDF during Digital Solutions 2002. Once there are a few examples of how things work, the pressure for this to be an option could grow quite fast. There is a benefit for print buyers so they will find some sites where JDF is working, even if there is a long delay before JDF is everywhere.

Back in Exeter. Yesterday catching up with things. Two main impressions now that drupa is a bit distant.

One. The web is till there, even at a tradeshow. Some companies now rely on the web and put less energy into exhibitions. I am still not sure what Adobe was doing there. They were very vague about the JDF input. Maybe they just wanted a chance to talk to different people about a possibility in the future. There was almost no information about PDF Jobready. I am pretty sure Datalogics was not on the HP stand. Maybe the web demo is enough. Microsoft and Macromedia had no stand at all. However, dotnet is in the background at the JDF Parc and Dreamweaver is assumed for the XMPie web option demonstrated on the Xerox stand.

Two. Some things have not advanced since IPEX 2002. At that time Pelagon showed how collaboration aspects of Acrobat could be used for mark-up and comment on proofs and designs. Maybe the costs of Acrobat are too high for enough people to have access to this. I did not see any signs of anyone using this at drupa. Drugs development and architecture are areas where it could be afforded maybe.

Also no sign of Printme. At IPEX there were several chances to try it out, spread around most of the halls. Maybe broadband has not arrived as expected. Checking the site it appears that most of the Printme sites are in the USA.

Now in Koln for the day. There will be more of a report around Sunday when I'm back in Exeter.

I spent most of the time in the CIP4 JDF Parc, Hall 4. It connects to most of what is happening in other halls so you tend to go back there. Optimus and Agfa are there from Print City. Xerox has no stand as shown in the printed guide but they do several presentations. Xerox FreeFlow turns out to be largely JDF, working closely with Creo and Adobe. Whatever the plugin for creating JDF data from InDesign and7or Acrobat is called, the Xerox expectation seems to be that it will be available fairly soon. It is presented as a part of FreeFlow as if FreeFlow is current. This would suggest the plug-in could be released as such, without waiting for a new release of Creative Suite. That might be eighteen months away. Maybe the timescale depends on feedback.

Several stands within the JDF Parc show the logo for Objective Advantage. CIP4 seems to be sharing specification updates and Objective Advantage continues to support JDF. See link for Seybold Hot Pick from 2002. http://www.oai.cc/default.asp?FeatureID=4&SectionID=12&RedBoxID=48 Sorry you will have to copy this in. There is ádwatch´software on this machine that blocks pop-ups of any kind, even the Blogger helper. Can't remember html any more either. This may be edited next week.

It turns out to be quite hard to find Adobe in the Heidelberg space. Even Kodak is not clearly identified as such. As yesterday, my impression is that Heidelberg are not communicating their contribution to JDF. They are working with Adobe and in future JDF from InDesign or Acrobat will work with Prinect but this is not at all obvious from their current display.

The best place to find Adobe is the JDF Parc in Hall 4 (with an excellent poster courtesy of Heidelberg). There is a chart showing other locations where Adobe crops up. I keep going on about Adobe as they seem to be the central company for digital connections with print. InDesign is now well accepted. XMPie have chosen it as their core page output software and apparently they find there is at least one copy on most sites. If the JDF Parc is too full to navigate ( Adobe is right at the back) then Print City also has a space explaining how JDF could work with InDesign and Acrobat.

Still no sign of JobReady or Datalogics. I had thought that Datalogics would be on the HP stand. ( see the website (http://www.datalogics.com/news-events.asp) as a source for this) Can´t find them so far.

However Triplearc have a small space showing software for variable data. At IPEX 2002 they had a much larger stand showing software for JDF input online. Discussion on why print management works in the UK and how long it will take print customers to understand JDF is a bit off topic for them at drupa but they might find time for a discussion. (HP Hall 4 C23)

Have arrived in Cologne and found the way to Dusseldorf. This is the closest I could find a hotel. Much going on here so I hope to take Saturday off.

The wonderful press office have accepted my hard copy versions of this blog and the WWW.atford site as evidence of my credentials as a journalist. So I have access to the full press release list and can join the queue for web access. This is written from a small internet cafe in Cologne. I feel less worried once I have completed the journey back. this could change over the week.

So far there has been a major presentation by Heidelberg. They fill Halls 1 and 2 and have always been a major part of drupa. The demonstration were mostly about new versions of their Speedmaster but the press releases included one on working with Adobe on PDF. Somewhere in the Heidelberg stand, probably as part of Prinect, there will be a demonstration of how to create JDF data from InDesign and Acrobat. Previously i had only heard about this as part of Print City.

Heidelberg are committed to JDF and talked about it a lot. One problem seems to be that they only show it working with their own products. In answer to questions they offered to take anyone to actual sites where other suppliers were part of the workflow, for example Agfa. But there won't be much except Heidelberg in Halls 1 and 2. So the JDF story may be more convincing in Print City and elsewhere.

I have updated the Acrobat Services websites as relevant for drupa, where I am headed next week.

The dotcom site has a photo from Seybold Amsterdam. I think it is ok to concentrate on drupa and hard copy for the next fortnight. In theory the dotcom site is supposed to move on to PDF on the web, forms etc. This will come back as an emphasis once there is more agreement on JDF. This could be during the first week of drupa.

The www.atford site has a map of drupa concentrating on the bits that relate to PDF.

This blog may not get updated for a week or so depending on whether I find some access and / or can work out what to concentrate on. But there will be an update soon.

I don't think PDF Jobready will be a major priority for Adobe at drupa. Their emphasis was on ways to input and display JDF from InDesign and Acrobat. Information about Jobready was through the stand (booth) for Datalogics. At drupa they will be part of the HP space. Hall 4 , stands C23 and D47.

One really good development was that that contacts were made to expand the support for the Acrobat User Forum. The AUF has announced a meeting on June 2nd to look at issues arising from Seybold. There will now also be involvement from the BCS Electronic Publishing Specialist Group and from XML UK.

The meeting will include an update on the defra case study on reader extensions, and a look at how Enfocus and Global Graphics have approached the issues of how to connect JDF with PDF. I will be speaking about how quality links in with this. As the meeting is at the IQA in London there could be others with a view on quality as well. My view is that the discussion on 'intelligent documents' could start by including some established ideas from quality theory.


The day will start with David Brailsford and a revised version of his keynote at Seybold. This overview of content and structure includes more reference to SVG over time. Acrobat users probably won't mind being SVG users as well. There is a guess that some SVG is already included in the Adobe Reader, as it now is.

The idea of co-locacating Seybold and XML Europe has worked out really well. It would be very positive if this happened again. The Job Definition Format discussion is based on XML support. It is not essential to understand this, but most of those closely involved seem to.

Medialive International have been criticised for some of the changes around Seybold, but this XML link is creative. Maybe the discussion needs to expand to maintain some momentum.

There are some details to work through however. It was possible to switch to the XML conference for a session but the timings did not overlap well. It would have been good to hear the session from HP and Reportlab on how the schedule was printed but there were several other Seybold sessions at this time.

SVG has turned up a few times during the conference. It may be the XML alongside ( see next post ) At first it was suggested that SVG is ok on screen but has no idea of what a page is like. However it turned out that the speaker from Apache Software Foundation was very intrerested in hard copy. Jeremias Maerki ( jeremias@maerki.org ) showed several cases of output to PDF and Postscript. See the website at http://xml.apache.org/fop/

The main project is for an XSL-FO. Sorry, I don't really understand what this is. It takes data in XML format and describes how to display it. Something like that. There were some robust comments in the conference about whether the Apache version works very well. The version number is FOP (0.20.5) so clearly there will be a better version. As far as I could tell the process that went into PDF was working ok. Suited for black on white text, data output sort of thing. High end CMYK colour maybe a long wait. But maybe some print company will be able to cope with RGB one day.

SVG seems to get support partly because it is an open standard and written in XML so linking to data is possible. Chuck Myers from Adobe pointed out that PDF is an open standard in that several other companies offer software that creates PDF. He made the fair point that PDFlib for example offer software to create PDF from data 'on the fly'. However the mood seemed to be that if SVG became well supported it would be easier to make a suggestion through committees rather than waiting for Adobe to release a new description of PDF.

Link for ReportLab

http://server.reportlab.com/cgi-bin/xmleu2004.cgi

If you're not at Seybold or XML Europe you can't actually visit any of this but you would see how XML works with a publication. XML will be part of Seybold in San Francisco and it seems likely there will be something in Amsterdam in 2005.

The Seybold Amsterdam event is benefiting from being co-located with XML Europe. Much of the discussion overlaps. Reportlab are offering a personalised schedule for XML Europe and later they will have some presentation with HP Indigo. As part of the XML apparently. More on this later.

'Later' could be Thursday.

http://www.jdf.info

The word is that this site will be updated. As of two clicks ago it was all about a Seybold in 2003.

But check back later. It will be updated in the near future.

Just one of the promises during the CIP4 day on JDF. My impression is that there is genuine wide support for JDF to work.

Some jargon, new to me. Interoperability Conformance Specifications. (ICS) . These are a way to check whether 'pairings' actually work. GATF has agreed to do tests once the specifications are agreed. It seems that ones for MIS and digital print are the furthest advanced. The Networked Graphic Production approach seems to have been to move on without waiting for the spec. But their experience has been fed back.

During the day it was suggested that the ideal recruit for pre-press would have some knowledge of web design, including PHP and MySQL. Quite a change from the attitudes in pre-press some time ago when the question was whether PDF could ever be made to work. There is support for JDF in the print industry. My guess is that the doubts will disappear quite quickly.

Apparently there will be a JDF roadmap for distribution at drupa. This document is so massive that it is impossible to fit on a slide and there was no announcement of a version for download. Maybe it involves some complex folding.

Just to say I have found Easy cafe so there will be a report from Seybold Amsterdam maybe tomorrow.

The printed description promises a 7 minute version of what will be on show at drupa from a PDF point of view.

7 minutes each speaker that is, hour and a quarter in all. There may be other things going on tomorrow but there will be a report later this week.

Still thinking about whether JDF is ready for print to take it up. This blogging approach seems to work as a way to think. I may change my mind later but here's a link

http://www.triplearc.com/

At IPEX 2002 they were one of the most definite in presenting JDF. Maybe the response from print companies has been slower than they hope for in buying the software, but the print management aspect seems to be going ok.

Things move a lot faster than would be convenient for a print investment schedule spread over time.