Let's Talk JDF with Jess Walker

Quark has been talking up Job Definition Format (JDF) support in the upcoming release of QuarkXPress 7. But, isn't JDF already being used with InDesign CS2?

JDF, or Job Definition Format, is an XML-based graph­ic arts indus­try stan­dard tick­et­ing sys­tem to facil­i­tate and auto­mate the exchange of infor­ma­tion between sys­tems in cre­ative and pro­duc­tion work­flows. According to the CIP4, the stan­dards orga­ni­za­tion dri­ving its devel­op­ment, JDF can: car­ry a print job from gen­e­sis through com­ple­tion, includ­ing a detailed descrip­tion of the cre­ative, pre­press, press, post­press and deliv­ery process­es; bridge the com­mu­ni­ca­tion gap between pro­duc­tion and Management Information Services (MIS), thus enabling instan­ta­neous job and device track­ing as well as detailed pre- and post-calculation of jobs in the graph­ic arts; bridge the gap between the cus­tomer’s view of prod­uct and the man­u­fac­tur­ing process by defin­ing a process-independent prod­uct view as well as a process-dependent pro­duc­tion view of a print job; define and track any user-defined work­flow with­out con­straints on the sup­port­ed work­flow mod­els, and; the abil­i­ty to do all of this in vir­tu­al­ly any workflow.

I talked with Adobe’s Senior Product Manager, Publishing Technologies and Services, Jess Walker, about JDF job tick­ets in InDesign, Acrobat, and the Creative Suite, and how users are already employ­ing JDF in cre­ative and pro­duc­tion workflows.

Quark VS InDesign​.com Let’s talk about JDF. Adobe is one of the archi­tects of the pro­posed JDF stan­dard. In Adobe’s opin­ion, why is JDF impor­tant? What does it bring to cre­ative pros and to pro­duc­tion personnel?

Jess Walker As a found­ing mem­ber of the CIP4 work­ing group Adobe’s pur­pose has been to bridge the infor­ma­tion gap between cre­ative pro­fes­sion­als and print pro­duc­tion. Our mem­ber­ship in CIP4 and the work that we do in the indi­vid­ual pan­els of the orga­ni­za­tion is focused on defin­ing an open stan­dard for use through­out both the cre­ative and print workflows. 

QvI How do Adobe appli­ca­tions sup­port JDF currently?

JW Acrobat 7 Professional ships with a JDF edi­tor and sub­mis­sion work­flow man­ag­er that is dri­ven by JDF infor­ma­tion. Creative Suite 2 is also JDF enabled. With Creative Suite 2 you can dri­ve the pro­duc­tion of PDF from InDesign based on a JDF job tick­et. Obviously these are new tech­nolo­gies that have been recent­ly released in our ship­ping prod­ucts. Over the next sev­er­al months you’ll hear more on how to gen­er­ate reli­able PDF from Creative Suite 2 using Acrobat 7 Professional and InDesign CS2. Both Acrobat 7 Professional and Creative Suite 2 are list­ed as part of the CIP4 inter­op­er­abil­i­ty matrix. What this means is that Adobe sup­ports the use of the open stan­dard through test­ing with oth­er ven­dors at CIP4 spon­sored events. In prac­tice, Adobe makes the out­put from our appli­ca­tions avail­able to all CIP4 mem­bers to insure com­pat­i­bil­i­ty. All of Adobe’s OEM part­ners, some com­peti­tors and many ISVs under­stand and con­sume the JDF from Acrobat 7 Professional and Creative Suite 2. 

QvI Could you elab­o­rate a bit more on your state­ment that one “can dri­ve the pro­duc­tion of PDF from InDesign based on a JDF job tick­et”? Are you say­ing InDesign does­n’t just cre­ate job tick­ets, it can act upon exist­ing JDF information?

JW The Suite is the key to this work­flow! By com­bin­ing Acrobat and InDesign, Adobe has cre­at­ed a pow­er­ful tool to con­trol the gen­er­a­tion of PDF tar­get­ed at spe­cif­ic Print Service Providers. Here’s how it works:
The JDF Job tick­et, or job tem­plate, is cre­at­ed by the print provider after a cus­tomer has placed an order. This job tick­et is cre­at­ed using Acrobat and has the pre­flight pro­file and the PDF job-option files embed­ded in it. Since the file for­mat is XML, it can be sent via e‑mail or post­ed to an FTP site for the cus­tomer to download.

The cus­tomer uses Acrobat to open and add any rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion to the job tick­et and in the process attach­es the InDesign native file to it. Using Acrobat’s built in JDF sub­mis­sion work­flow, InDesign is used to con­vert the attached file with the job-options that are embed­ded in the job tick­et. After the con­tent is con­vert­ed to PDF, it’s pre­flight­ed in Acrobat using the Preflight pro­file that was attached to the Job tick­et. Finally the PDF and the JDF are enclosed in a CIP4 com­pli­ant Mime file for sub­mis­sion to the printer.
To recap – the job tick­et or tem­plate is gen­er­at­ed at the PSP with the spe­cif­ic Preflight, job-option and job infor­ma­tion need­ed to print the job.

The cre­ative (cus­tomer) attach­es the InDesign file to the job tick­et and clicks sub­mit to run the JDF sub­mis­sion work­flow. Workflow is the fol­low­ing: PDF con­ver­sion based on the PSP’s require­ments, Preflighting based on the PSP’s require­ments and ver­i­fi­ca­tion based on the job tick­et definition.

This is a sim­ple and pow­er­ful work­flow that is pro­vid­ed out of the box with Creative Suite 2 Premium, and is ready to use today.

QvI What adjunct appli­ca­tions or tech­nolo­gies are required to ful­ly uti­lize JDF on the desk­top? And in production? 

JW Acrobat 7 Professional will sup­port both cre­ative and print pro­fes­sion­als who are inter­est­ed in under­stand­ing and build­ing a JDF work­flow for more reli­able PDF deliv­ery. Most print pro­fes­sion­als already have pur­chased or have plans to upgrade to Acrobat 7 – Adobe can show them how to use it to gain bet­ter reli­a­bil­i­ty over their file deliv­ery today. 

QvI With the cur­rent state of pre-press, press, and post-press process­es, how usable are JDF job jack­ets? How far through pro­duc­tion are Adobe-created job jack­ets supported? 

JW I believe that most cus­tomers buy­ing new equip­ment or soft­ware from the usu­al list of graph­ic arts ven­dors will be get­ting JDF-enabled sys­tems as part of the sys­tem. At OnDemand there was an excel­lent exam­ple of multi-vendor coop­er­a­tion at the Xerox booth. Xerox and Duplo demon­strat­ed a JDF enabled book pub­lish­ing sys­tem using the Objective Advantage Symbio sys­tem to coor­di­nate the work­flow. Adobe, Xerox, Duplo and Objective Advantage are all CIP4 mem­bers. Adobe has a for­mal rela­tion­ship with Xerox but in order to inter­op­er­ate with Duplo and Objective Advantage, we don’t need a for­mal rela­tion­ship, we sim­ply emit industry-standard JDF from Acrobat and that data can be used through­out the work­flow. Adobe was­n’t part of this demon­stra­tion but we know that Acrobat 7 is com­pat­i­ble with both the Xerox work­flow and the Objective Advantage sys­tem through the CIP4 work­ing groups. 

QvI Where does the future of JDF lie? What is its ulti­mate realization? 

JW From Adobe’s point of view, the ulti­mate real­iza­tion of JDF on the cre­ative desk­top is two fold. First – We’d like to see more print­ers using JDF to con­vey their pro­duc­tion require­ments to their cus­tomers so that few­er mis­takes are made pri­or to deliv­er­ing files to the print­er. Second – Adobe is com­mit­ted to build­ing bet­ter tools that increase the reli­a­bil­i­ty of the con­tent deliv­ery from the desk­top to print­ers. Ultimately this means that con­tent deliv­ery for print will be gen­er­at­ed, test­ed and deliv­ered accord­ing to the pro­duc­tion require­ments of the print­er with­out cre­at­ing an undue bur­den on the cre­ative to do it. 

QvI Where do the cre­ative and pro­duc­tion systems–Adobe’s and others–still have to grow in reach­ing the ulti­mate real­iza­tion of job jacketing? 

JW Adobe is at the very fore­front of this new tech­nol­o­gy. While Adobe is now pro­vid­ing an easy means to begin work­ing with JDF from a soft­ware per­spec­tive, our con­tri­bu­tion is small – rel­a­tive to the size of the indus­try. As new equip­ment and soft­ware begin to roll out over the next sev­er­al years, you’ll see a big change in the way that print­ers and their cus­tomers inter­act with each oth­er and it will be because of JDF. 

Additional Resources:

Website: CIP4 (JDF stan­dards body)
Website: JDF User Forum
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