What is JDF

A lot of people do not seem to realise what JDF is or stand for so heres a little bit of information about this standard which is becoming more popular especialy in light of POD and other services which are now becoming streamlined.

Basicaly it allows a creator to cross purpose their work, so fopr instance if you made a mag you could automaticlay have the content repuposed for mobile phone, web and pda all at the same time.

The most prominent features of JDF are:

1. Ability to carry a print job from genesis through completion. This includes a detailed description of the creative, prepress, press, postpress and delivery processes.
2. Ability to bridge the communication gap between production and Management Information Services. This ability enables instantaneous job and device tracking as well as detailed pre- and post calculation of jobs in the graphic arts.
3. Ability to 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.
4. Ability to define and track any user defined workflow without constraints on the supported workflow models. This includes serial, parallel, overlapping and iterative processing in arbitrary combinations and over distributed locations.
5. Ability to do so (1,2,3&4) under nearly any precondition.

JDF