CIP4 announces Version 1.3 of JDF

The International Cooperation for the Integration of Processes in Prepress, Press, and Postpress (CIP4) announced that version 1.3 of the Job Definition Format has been published. Prior to this version, the JDF Specification was optimized for sheetfed and digital printing. JDF 1.3 introduces features to support web offset printing, newspaper production and packaging.

‘JDF now models many types of packaging processes, a huge area of the printing industry,’ said Dr Rainer Prosi of Heidelberg and CIP4's technical officer. ‘While it can now be said that JDF fully supports web offset and newspaper production, in the case of packaging, we've only introduced some basic functionality. We focused first on what is necessary to support board and folding carton converting and future editions of JDF will expand on this foundation to support other areas of packaging, such as flexible packaging.’

JDF 1.3 now includes the ability to track individual elements on a page, whereas previously the page was the smallest job component that could be tracked. Job ganging, file format conversion to and from various file formats were also improved and JDF's consumable identification was enhanced.