Welcome to Adobe GoLive 6

Ghent PDF Group publish guidance
for Microsoft Office

Long ago (in the early 1980s to be more precise), the idea of Desktop Publishing was not entirely convincing for professionals working in the printing industry. Then computer to plate came along and Postscript cleared up a lot of the troubles around variance in standards. But the idea of a "print ready PDF" arriving from most general customers for print was a bit outlandish. Even when the Mac was accepted in pre-press there were still doubts about DOS and Windows. Quark became a standard but most office software was not on the map.

So it is a sign of the times that the Ghent PDF Workgroup have released a guide to creating PDF from Microsoft Office to a standard that print professionals will welcome. These are the people who talked about the PDF/X standards till the ISO took over. The guidance is free and is in a PDF file created in Word through Acrobat. It covers colour and fonts in Acrobat and Jaws and through the Microsoft download for Office. Microsoft software can also save in the XML Paper Specification (XPS) though the suggestion here is to import this into Acrobat so saving as PDF could be simpler.

The XML format is supported by Global Graphics who also develop Jaws PDF. At some point in time there will be support for XPS from print service providers. Adobe are working on MARS, a project to rewrite PDF as XML friendly. There may be more about both MARS and XML during drupa. There is still not as much support for JDF as was once expected, especially close to the print customer. But there is an expectation that communication can be convenient, as in loading a video to YouTube for example.

Back to WWWatford Ghent PDF Group publish guidance for Microsoft Office Long ago (in the early 1980s to be more precise), the idea of Desktop Publishing was not entirely convincing for professionals working in the printing industry. Then computer to plate came along and Postscript cleared up a lot of the troubles around variance in standards. But the idea of a "print ready PDF" arriving from most general customers for print was a bit outlandish. Even when the Mac was accepted in pre-press there were still doubts about DOS and Windows. Quark became a standard but most office software was not on the map. So it is a sign of the times that the Ghent PDF Workgroup have released a guide to creating PDF from Microsoft Office to a standard that print professionals will welcome. These are the people who talked about the PDF/X standards till the ISO took over. The guidance is free and is in a PDF file created in Word through Acrobat. It covers colour and fonts in Acrobat and Jaws and through the Microsoft download for Office. Microsoft software can also save in the XML Paper Specification (XPS) though the suggestion here is to import this into Acrobat so saving as PDF could be simpler. The XML format is supported by Global Graphics who also develop Jaws PDF. At some point in time there will be support for XPS from print service providers. Adobe are working on MARS, a project to rewrite PDF as XML friendly. There may be more about both MARS and XML during drupa. There is still not as much support for JDF as was once expected, especially close to the print customer. But there is an expectation that communication can be convenient, as in loading a video to YouTube for example.