Issued by: Exell Technologies


JDF was initially developed by Adobe Systems, Agfa, Heidelberg, and MAN Roland in 1999 and handed over to CIP4 (International Cooperation for the Integration of Processes in Prepress, Press and Postpress), formally known as CIP3, at Drupa 2004.
The intent of JDF is to allow the inter operability between hardware and software from different vendors in order to create a flexible and transparent workflow system. The glue that binds these various pieces together is defined as what the printing industry knows as JDF.

Many students and professionals have spent hours, days, weeks and months writing articles and white papers around JDF, what it is, how it works, what it can do for printers and so we can carry on. Many printers are still asking these questions, the following few paragraphs are basically a summary of all these thousands of pages available on the topic, with references to where more information on JDF could be found at the end of this article.

People commonly refer to “JDF products” or a “JDF workflow”. In common usage these items should add the word “enabled” after the word JDF. So in reality people should refer to “JDF enabled products” and “JDF enabled workflows”. This is a much more accurate description of how JDF actually works. JDF is a specification (standard), therefore products and workflows are “enabled” to understand the JDF specification (standard) and the parameters defined in the specification.

The JDF specification in itself is huge. In reality, businesses will be building small pieces of a complete JDF enabled workflow and these pieces will then be strung together “on the fly”. The eventual goal being an automated workflow. As noble as the goal of total automated workflow is, we must remember the human elements involved. People like the idea of a “creative person” adding that indescribable something that pushes a job from good to great. A true and well designed JDF-enabled workflow will still leave the flexibility required for this “creative person”.

JDF is a series of building blocks which are constructed of pieces which are enabled to understand specific XML code as defined by the JDF working groups and detailed in the JDF specification. The “glue” function of JDF is designed to facilitate the inter-process communication required to complete the print job. This enhanced communication “should” increase productivity thus increasing profits.

In a nutshell, most of us know that PostScript describes pages and PDF describes documents, and in the same way JDF describes jobs. JDF can be seen as an electronic job ticket with special instructions and information tags that JDF-Enabled systems can understand and use, making total production process automation a possibility and reality.

JDF in a bit more technical terms – JDF is a method of describing a print job from beginning to end in a structured and formally defined method. The ability to describe all of these processes allows JDF to facilitate communication amongst the processes. Thus in practical terms, JDF allows for the exchanged of instructions and job parameters relating to a print job between the various processes required to complete a print job itself. This inter process communication is handled using a messaging system called JMF (Job messaging Format) and is in turn controlled by an MIS (Management Information Systems). These three pieces, JDF, JMF and MIS make up what is referred to as a JDF system.

Written by Dewald Rosema from Exell Technologies
Visit PrintingQuestions.com for more links and in-depth articles around JDF.

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[27 Feb 2008 17:02]

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