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The Periodical Publishers' Association has struggled to establish an understanding on the delivery of reliable digital files. Its reward has been acceptance of PDF as the way to go By Gareth Ward
Six years ago the first digital production conference staged by the Periodical Publishers' Association began the debate about how to bring the benefits of digital workflows to publishers and by extension to printers and advertisers.
At that time, few printers had ctp, networks were crude and PDF was decidedly flaky. It was not by any means a production format. Digital workflows were something to dream about, not something to implement
Yet out of that first gathering of a few dozen souls has come the PPA digital production conference (Printing World, last week), one of the biggest industry gatherings of the year with virtually unanimous support for PDF as a production format, particularly when tamed within the terms of Pass4press, a flavour of PDF first introduced a year ago and which has been taken a step further with a second version.
Nor is this the end of the road. Further tools can and will be added to the format to make it more useful to all involved in the production chain.
Reliable format
The initial release broke the logjam that was developing over ctp as printers were reluctant to invest unless publishers could deliver...