Harlequin Version 12 contains a raft of features for high-speed digital printing, including further additions for labels and packaging applications and new features for wide-format and envelope printing.

The RIP transforms design and pre-press data into a format that can be printed and feeds those pages to the press at “blistering speeds”, according to the developer.

Version 12 is available in two editions: the Harlequin Host Renderer SDK, which powers the digital front-ends (DFEs) used in high-volume digital production environments, and Harlequin MultiRIP, which is used for conventional and light digital production printing.

One new feature allows barcodes to be generated in the RIP. A number of barcode symbologies are supported for mailing, customer engagement, process control and logistics. Barcodes can be snapped to the correct size for the output resolution in use to maximise readability.

Some applications, such as packaging, labels, envelopes and industrial print, require a simple form of VDP support, the developer said, for example where a single background page is combined with overlay graphics that are selected using data from a file supplied in a format like CSV. Serial or batch codes can be added using dynamic counters without writing values to a CSV first.

Support has also been added to apply overlays on top of a single page PDF file to add text and barcodes for serial numbers, QR codes for personalised URLs, postal barcodes and addresses on envelopes and many other use cases.

“These are a simplified method of handling variable data. Harlequin has something called VariData in it, which is a great way of optimising the speed of processing for optimised PDFs and for PDF/VT files,” said Global Graphics Software chief technology officer and head of product management Martin Bailey.

“We’re not taking that away in any sense, but we were getting a lot of input from our OEM partners that sometimes that’s a bit heavyweight, or a bit difficult, and there are some security implications for it.

“In some packaging, label, envelope and industrial print security ticketing environments, there’s a need for very simple personalisation or for adding serial and batch numbers that maybe fully-resolved optimised PDF or PDF/VT files aren’t necessarily the best solution for.”

Also new for Version 12 is a set of new software screens unveiled last month that have been developed to smooth out imperfections caused by the physics of jetting ink onto substrates.

The PDF 2.0 standard, which was published in 2017 by the International Organization for Standardization, is billed as the first “post-Adobe” standard.

“Even though we’re very early in the usage of PDF 2.0 in the field, we believe it’s exactly the right thing for us to put PDF 2.0 support into Harlequin because it’s really great insurance for our OEM partners and our users,” said Bailey.

“It really helps to protect them against what’s going to happen coming from their customers in the future.”

He added: “The safest approach to the adoption of PDF 2.0 for press manufacturers is to ensure that all applications that consume PDF, such as the DFE for your press, are upgraded to support PDF 2.0.

“Your DFE is the best place to start because if your customer sends files for processing that contain some of the new features in PDF 2.0 they will usually be silently ignored by an older reader with unexpected results in output.”

Harlequin Host Renderer 12 supports all of the features of the new PDF 2.0 standard that are relevant for production printing.

Global Graphics said if a user’s DFE is not compliant with this new standard, it will silently ignore the new features available with unexpected results in output.

The developer added that while upgrading a DFE and continuing to consume PDF 1.7 files is safe, not upgrading and trying to consume PDF 2.0 files may not be.

The Harlequin RIP is used by HP in its Production Pro for Indigo Labels and Packaging pre-press suite, as well as in Durst’s Symphony workflow and Roland’s VersaWorks Dual RIP.

Harlequin Version 12 is commercially available with immediate effect and has been delivered by Global Graphics to its OEM partners, who are currently working to integrate it into their systems.