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RESTON, VA—A new data standard for variable print jobs has been released by the ANSI- (American National Standards Institute) accredited Committee for Graphic Arts Technologies Standards (CGATS). The new document's rather ungainly title is "ANSI CGATS.20, Graphic Technology—Variable Printing Data Exchange Using PPML and PDF (PPML/VDX)." It is said to create an open standard for variable data exchange by combining PPML's capabilities for encoding the layout of variable data with the PDF format's openness, reliability and soft-proofing benefits. (www.npes.org)