Jdf Analysis And Applied Research

With the increasing of the short run printing jobs and complexity of printing job, the administrative cost in printing industry becomes higher and higher. In order to accommodate to these new circumstances, we need more automatic, more integrated and more flexible printing workflow. Job Definition Format (JDF) was introduced by the International Cooperation for Integration of Processes in Prepress, Press and Postpress (CIP4) in April, 2001. The organization CEP4 aims at implementing digital printing workflow through a standard data exchange file format.In China, the cognition to JDF is still in early stage and JDF is just used in practical business application at the beginning, so this thesis makes an anatomy of the JDF Specification. JDF itself is not a product or a system, but it is an open standard that describes an entire print job and all required processes for its production. JDF is based on the extensible Markup Language (XML). On the basis of knowledge of characteristics and importance of Printing on Demand (POD) workflow and the advantages of Computer Integrated Printing (CIP), JDF components are analyzed, which include PostScript and PDF as content data exchange format, PJTF and PPF as business data exchange format. JDF gets rid of the shortcomings of PJTF and PPF, which encode in special control language. JDF encodes in XML, it is also compatible with PJTF and PPF. Some basic concepts about JDF job are described. The four components required to create, modify, route, interpret and execute a JDF job are known as agents, controllers, devices and machines. We can create JDF job specification and JDF processes based on JDF job Model and JDF node structures.JDF Specification is the basis of creating new digital printing workflow and is now in continuous development. As an application to JDF, an implementation of JDF/PrintTalk is shown by encoding a Request for Quote (RFQ) for a business card print job.