[Desktop_printing] RE: PDF/X + PDF/A

[Craig Bradney]

On Tuesday 18 April 2006 04:45, Kurt Pfeifle wrote:
> On Monday 17 April 2006 20:41, Dov Isaacs wrote:
> > If you are looking for a reasonable international standard
> > to look at with regards to PDF for printing, I most strongly
> > recommend that you look at the draft PDF/X-4 specification
> > currently being worked on by CGATS and ISO. Expected to be
> > ratified in early 2007 (not that long off when you consider
> > international standards and the overhead it takes to get them
> > approved), PDF/X-4 goes well beyond PDF/X-3 by supporting
> > (1) PDF 1.6 (PDF compatible with Acrobat 7), (2) color
> > management (untagged CMYK with a target printing condition
> > as well as ICC profile-tagged CMYK, RGB, and spot colors),
> > (3) live transparency, and (4) layers.
>
> Hi, Dov,
>
> good to hear a voice from Adobe speaking up here :-)
>
> > Any and all earlier PDF/X standards effectively represent
> > device-dependent PDF (either device-dependent colors and/or
> > flattened transparency) which is absolutely what you DON'T
> > want!
>
> What we also *don't* want, is a PDF that can't be printed by our
> current users, with their current tools and their current printers
> -- I hope you understand that :-)
>
> Whatever all the earlier PDF/X standards represent -- they *are*
> a standard now, and if that standard is requested by some industry
> workflow, or by some government regulation, we should make efforts
> to output it.
>
> > (We considered such PDF that does not represent final
> > form content at the highest level of graphical abstration
> > as "ruined" PDF!)
> >
> > 	- Dov
>
> Cheers,
> Kurt [*not* speaking on behalf of Scribus or anyone
>       else, just for himself only]

PDF/X-4 does sounds very compelling though. Not having to flatten 
transparencies, better colour management options and layers.. mm... good.

It would be pretty hard to support the existing /X* formats to achieve all the 
nice things out there without the ideas Andreas proposed and/or X-4.

Craig [ speaking for Scribus :) ]