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D
Dr.Adam
Inspiring
August 6, 2013
Question

VDP using PDF as Input

  • August 6, 2013
  • 1 reply
  • 4473 views

Adobe planned  for printer manufacturer to use PDF Engine few years back

Finally now you start see large digital printer manufactures like Xerox is releasing color 70+ Pages Per Minute print engine support PS 3  and PDF side by side.

This is new for 2013!

And it is expected to increase to all ranges of printers and all vendors.

Does anybody see VDP/personalization applications developed which based on accepting data stream as PDF !

I know PlanetPress and GMC now supporting PDF input data stream side by side as raw data

However I still see speed , more feature and control can only acheive if the data stream is raw data

e.g. Text , ASCII , EBCDIC , CSV , TAB Delimited   and XML

Cheers

Adam.

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1 reply

Dov Isaacs
Dov Isaacs
Legend
August 6, 2013

You should investigate PDF/VT, an ISO standard for using PDF for representation of VDP content. The DNA of PDF/VT is use of Forms XObjects, Image XObjects, and Reference XObjects for repeated content and for caching of such rendered XObjects by the RIP / DFE software to optimize throughput.

At Print'13 in Chicago in September, you will see release of the very graphically-rich CalPoly GrC PDF/VT-1 application test files which are great for testing implementations of direct PDF RIPs supporting PDF/VT optimization!

XMPie has an excellent PDF/VT generation capability built on top of InDesign for both desktop or server. Other vendors are also now rolling out PDF/VT support.

PostScript, PPML, and the various vendor-proprietary solutions should become dead issues when dealing with graphically-rich, color-managed with live transparency VDP workflows in the future!

          - Dov
             (chair TC130 WG2/TF2 - PDF/X

              and co-chair TC130 WG2/TF3 - VDP & PDF/VT)

- Dov Isaacs, former Adobe Principal Scientist (April 30, 1990 - May 30, 2021)
D
Dr.AdamAuthor
Inspiring
August 6, 2013

It is no doubt that PDF/VT will grow and improved and by time more applications will developed using this relatively new technology

Still a question that most of the systems - heritage- even newly developed applications - specially in high volume output are prodcuing output as text , CSV, and of course XML !!

And these format neww Postscript to handle the personalization and VDP!

If these system applications produced PDF - as most of it has tools to produce PDF but also they have tools within it to provide simple VDP and then no need for second step VDP software e.g. PDF/VT to handle the formatting!

I am not defending postscript!

As I am sure the future will be for PDF/VT    but PDF engine is released in 2006 !

Only in 2012 Software developer start to implement it !

Only in 2013 Printer manufacturers started to use it seriously and not solely but side by side with PS 3 ! as you can see it took them more than them 6 years to do that!

So when do you think they will abandon Postscript totally and it will be died as you said !!   may be within another more 6-8 years     unless one printer manufacture or software company will develop PS 4 with ICC profiling and layering  etc

You mentioned that Adobe will not do it.

Ironically still Adobe Postscript the most famous , most important programing language across the last 15-20 years compared to the effort invested in it and other computer languages!

I mean Adobe never put any engineering in postscript since year 2000!!  the latest documentation/revision is dated 2000 !

Can you think where C++ or C#  will be if development stopped for two years !  may be 10th of languages died over the last 10-15 year   but still Postscript released  in each print device and implemented in all VDP software!

Adobe created a miracle called Postscript and only Adobe can kill it  but no so fast

Dr.  Adam

Dov Isaacs
Dov Isaacs
Legend
August 6, 2013

To be very clear:

(1)     The “high volume output” systems you refer to are not outputting simple text, CSV, and XML for VDP unles all they are printing is plain text on top of pre-printed shells. If you are referring to something like PPML, it turns out that PPML may be based on XML but all its graphics are other file formats including TIFF and JPEG raster formats as well as EPS and PDF. Effectively, all such formats that allow EPS and PDF graphics are currently converted to PostScript.

(2)     Actually, software developers (including XMPie and HP) were well into developing PDF/VT output in 2011. The PDF/VT standard wasn't even published by ISO until 2010!

(3)     I never talked about the death of PostScript but rather, that its use for graphically rich VDP will become a dead issue, although it will take a while.

(4)     As previously mentioned in other posts, there will not be any further development of the PostScript language. ICC color management and transparency will never be part of the PostScript imaging model. And if Adobe won't do that, I can assure you no one else will because simply, there is no perceived value to it!

(5)     You personally have no knowledge of what engineering work Adobe has done or not done for PostScript either prior to or after 2000. In fact, Adobe still has a sustaining engineering group that works on our PostScript implementation for our OEM partners who have PostScript products, especially in the desktop printing arena.

(6)     There is no question that PostScript was a major achievement for the printing and graphic arts industry, not only technically, but because it arrived at a time at which Adobe was able to convince a wide array of printer device manufacturers to adopt it instead of continuing to pursue proprietary solutions. It is questionable whether such a feat could be accomplished today. In 1984-85, the circumstances happened to be just right and between QMS, Linotype, and then Apple, we got the right mix and threshold of early and influencial adopters to make PostScript and its ecosystem successful.

FWIW, Cobol programs are still around and thriving!

          - Dov

- Dov Isaacs, former Adobe Principal Scientist (April 30, 1990 - May 30, 2021)
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