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VDP software vendor, GMC Software, made an interesting announcement yesterday with news that they plan to support Adobe PDF Print Engine 2 and the "emerging PDF standard for personalized content; PDF/VT". This announcement comes as a surprise, as neither the PDF Print Engine 2 or PDF/VT are available yet. Adobe has been keeping it's next version of PDF Print Engine under wraps and has not disclosed any news of a new version. Also, PDF/VT is not yet a published standard.
It's true that the ISO Technical Committee 130 are currently working on a new standard for 'variable printing data exchange' in PDF; ISO/WD 16612-2. The working name is "VPDF/X-200X", although this was always slated to change as 'VPDF' is a current product from Verisis. The new name will be PDF/VT, "VT" representing "variable and transactional printing". It is understood that this standard will be published sometime this quarter. However, as of today, it's still an unpublished working draft (at least, according to the ISO Web site).
While I appreciate that GMC want to beat others to the rank and be the first to claim support for this unannounced PDF Print Engine Version and VI standard, it's important to note that there's only one digital print vendor that currently supports Adobe PDF Print Engine, and that's Fuji Xerox with their 490/980 colour continuous feed engine. To date, no other digital printer supports the PDF Print Engine. Fuji Xerox were the first and Xerox Europe will be next when they start installations of the 490/980 engine over the next few months.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, numerous VI languages, such as PPML, PPML/VDX VIPP, VPS and others are currently used in variable-data printing. In addition data streams such as IPDS, IJPDS, LCDS and Metacode are commonly used in transactional printing. However, as the PDF Print Engine doesn't support any of these formats, print vendors will need to ensure that they can run their engines at rated speed using PDF. Until now, PDF has not really been a strong player in VDP, largely due to a perception of sending down a 100,000+ page PDF file to a printer. The reality is that PDF is actually a well suited language for variable-data printing, as it supports object reusability (through x-objects) and can be soft proofed (using Adobe Reader).
While Fuji Xerox may be the first digital print vendor to support the PDF Print Engine others will definitely follow, so it's important that VDP software vendors look at supporting this new interpreter and emerging VI standard. But unlike GMC, maybe they should wait until PDF/VT and PDF Print Engine 2 are released before making further premature announcements.
Posted on Thursday, 1 May 2008 at 4:49 AM | TrackBack: http://www.veedeepee.com/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/127
Eliot Harper is a big supporter for the Republic. The picture of the Queen & Prince Phillip is a smoke screen.
Posted by Michael Gillis on Tuesday, 6 May 2008 at 12:14 AM
It's true, I do keep a framed photo of our Illustrious Leaders on my office desk, but I'm certainly no Republican. Anyway, what the heck has this got to do with VDP?
Posted by Eliot Harper on Tuesday, 6 May 2008 at 5:33 AM
XMPie will support this format eather.
Posted by JHD on Thursday, 4 September 2008 at 1:30 AM