Report Validates Standards-Based Digital Print Interoperability
ROCHESTER , NY —April 11, 2006—PODi, the Digital Printing Initiative, has announced the release of the PPML interoperability report and test suite for the Personalized Print Markup Language.
According to a PODi announcement, the report provides results of interoperability testing across the products of nine leading vendors using the PPML test suite. Interoperability is defined as “the ability of printing systems from different manufacturers to consume and print a properly configured PPML/GA data stream without device-dependent customization.”
“The report defines how to achieve interoperability, and the test suite validates results,” said James Mekis, PODi director for technology, in the announcement.
Results demonstrate the cooperation among vendors in pursuit of standards, the announcement said. The report documents PPML interoperability across the following:
Xerox and Xeikon
Creo-powered HP Indigo, Konica-Minolta and Xerox devices
EFI Fiery-powered Canon, Kodak, Konica-Minolta, Oce, Ricoh and Xerox systems
In addition to commercial products that currently produce PPML for variable data printing, there are a significant number of printing companies that develop their own custom PPML-based solutions. Users find that when printing variable data, PPML's caching of re-usable elements can deliver a 10X improvement in print speed versus simply printing a stream of static PDF or Postscript pages, according to the announcement.
“Release of the report and test suite is a major milestone in the evolution and adoption of PPML as the open standard of interoperability in the rapidly growing variable data printing market,” said Rab Govil, PODi president, in the announcement. “Though the standard has been available for some time, the test suite provides the first objective means of validating interoperability for the many digital printing devices that consume PPML. The interoperability report provides guidance along with a validation tool, so developers who are currently building PPML solutions can enhance interoperability across devices.”
The PPML Consumer Interoperability Report is available at the “Information for PPML Developers” section of the PODi website. The test suite is available for download at the same location, and is free for purposes of research, development and testing.
www.podi.org
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