"From our point of view we see JDF as important in two areas," said Global Graphics chief technology officer Adrian Ford. "The first is the complete MIS driven workflow, the big architecture JDF systems if you like, where MIS, pre-press, press and post-press are all integrated together. The second is informal JDF workflows which bring the benefits and promise of JDF to small and medium sized businesses."

The enabler module gives the latest version of Harlequin a JDF option, which can be incorperated into OEMs existing JDF applications, or have new JDF workflows built around it. "It provides complete JDF capability to our Harlequin RIP customers, and to those that use our RIP technology and take it into their workflows," said Ford.

The JDF enabler component of the RIP offers complete "intelligent" JDF control. Its available as an option for Harlequin Eclipse Release v6.4, and is also in software development kit form as part of Cortex.

Cortex is a new development platform for OEMs. Described by Ford as "a complete platform  serving as a foundation layer for common print workflow tasks". It takes core technologies from Global Graphics, as well as other vendors, and Global hopes that it will make it easier and more economical for OEMs to develop digital workflows for developing and previously neglected sectors.

It also announced that it has extended its relationship with HP to provide Harlequin as the standard on-board RIP for the HP Indigo 5000 digital press.

Story by Darryl Danielli at Drupa