CIP4, GATF Plan JDF Certification

ASHINGTON, DC—A five-year agreement has been reached between the Graphic Arts Technical Foundation (GATF) and the International Cooperation for the Integration of Processes in Prepress, Press and Postpress (CIP4) to develop JDF-enabled application testing, product testing and certification programs.

Under terms of the deal, GATF will cooperate with CIP4's interoperability and other working groups to develop certification testing methods for different classes of printing and prepress software, systems and equipment.

"To specify exactly what individual classes of devices need to do with JDF, CIP4 members are developing Interoperability Conformance Specifications (ICS) that will provide the standard for individual classes of devices," notes James Harvey, CIP4 executive director.

"In practice, no single device is likely to utilize all that the JDF specification provides for. For instance, if you are in the digital printing business, you may not care to facilitate data on hard case binding. A RIP need not facilitate JDF preflighting. And a stitcher probably doesn't need to handle image rendering data," he adds.

Once they are published, ICS documents will be used as the basis for certification testing by GATF.