printCafe vs. PrintTalk--Waging a PrintWar?

printCafe is also in agreement, and stresses that PCX should not be viewed as a standard by the industry. "PCX was never intended to be any kind of a standard. It is simply an outlining of the method by which people could interchange data with our solutions," notes Olin.

Although neither PrintTalk nor printCafe see themselves in the standards business, both are involved and contributing to larger standards organizations such as CIP4, the JDF standards organization. "We're really trying to be citizens of the industry at large," says Walker. He notes that PrintTalk was recently recognized by CIP4 for its contributions to the intent portion of JDF, which is the front-end description component of JDF. "Six to eight months ago, the intent portion of JDF needed a lot of development. It was just a concept at that point. Now, it's fleshed out and is a fairly complete specification that has been adopted by CIP4 into JDF."