Variable Data Printing – New PDF Formats – PDF + VT = VDP – Part 2 – 18th May 2009
An improved APPE 2, announced at drupa, is filtering through to the latest DFEs and workflow upgrades. One of the first is Fujifilm’s XMF 2.0, which shipped in October, but it will be appearing within the offerings from Agfa, Creo, EFI, Heidelberg, Screen and Xerox, among others.
With the announcement of APPE 2, Adobe started talking about its plan for variable data. APPE 2 has support for variable data processing, such as detecting repeated elements automatically and only processing them once then caching them, to cut processing load.
APPE 2 is designed to run on highly scalable server hardware, which will be needed to provide the horsepower for full-colour variable data runs.
The full benefit of this will start to appear once the next generation PDF/VT appears which will have variable data handling built in and active within layers, transparency and other goodies. It can also be controlled by JDF job tickets. PDF/VT will be viewable through the free Adobe Reader and it will apparently be possible to preview variable data within this.
Last year PDF 1.7 was published as an ISO standard (32000), addressing a long-standing complaint that Adobe exercised a de facto monopoly and third party developers didn’t always know what was going on inside. Now they do.
PDF/VT will be an ISO standard (16612-2) from the start and its currently wending its way through the committee stage, which is possibly why it’s taking so long to appear.
Something might hit the desktops later this year, which might just tie in with the 18 month upgrade cycle for Acrobat, Adobe’s chief PDF creation and editing application. If this follows previous practices, Acrobat 10 will appear at the end of this year, followed by a Creative Suite 5 around March or April 2010. This is quite exciting. Nobody’s saying anything officially, but there seems to be potential for a version of InDesign, possibly an extra-cost ‘Extended’ edition, to handle variable data internally. Third party variable data programs like Kodak Darwin and HP SmartStream Designer already plug into InDesign and Xpress of course, but having it built in may shake up the design market a bit.
To be continued…
