FE Burman head of IT and project management Andy Psarianos, who represents the PPA on the Ghent PDF Workgroup and chairs its RIP/Output subcommittee, gave an overview on the achievements and objectives of the group.

Among other things, he highlighted the group's work on JDF job tickets and printing from Microsoft Office documents.

"This [Office Document printing] is a huge issue," said Psarianos. "Powerpoint is probably the most common file format for submission of digital print, and it's a very platform dependent product it's unpredictable."

The Office document sub committee is working on developing "good printable files from office documents".

Work on job ticketing includes white boarding the entire production workflow to create guidelines and work out how to make JDF work. Work is also being carried out on colour management.

Commenting on the Ghent PDF Workgroup's position and whether it clashed or compromised the work of standards bodies such as the ISO, Psarianos said: "It's not about developing standards, it's about best practice it's about making stuff work. You can build specifications on top of standards."

The debate on flatplanning systems highlighted the current lack of integration between interested parties the drivers and benefit a system could be and what was holding back adoption.

Marcus Kirby director of Vertis PRS said: "Why would advertisers go for it? The only reason I can see is lower media costs."

AdsML's ability to implement standards in the ad delivery workflow was highlighted as a benefit that would bring standardisation.

Story by Barney Cox