Abstract

JDF – the Job Definition Format has been around since the turn of the millennium. It is the de facto standard for job tickets in a commercial printing environment. Since the year 2000, XML – the base grammar of JDF and related tools and formats such as XPath, XSLT Stylesheet transforms and XSD Schema have been greatly improved and expanded. The software agents – Management information systems, workflow control systems and device controls - typically encountered in Print Shops have also matured.

This paper will analyze the advantages and disadvantages of JDF and show that XJDF is a viable path forward that retains the advantages of JDF while improving most of the disadvantages.