Birmingham, UK (IPEX) – April 4-11, 2006 – The Ghent PDF Workgroup (GWG), an international organization comprised of users, associations & developers building best practices for publishing workflows; today announces it will present at the Ipex event in Birmingham, England. GWG is perhaps the fastest growing global best practice organizations for graphic arts. Ipex, the largest printing and graphic-arts show in the English-speaking world, takes place April 4–11 at the UK’s National Exhibition Centre (NEC). In addition to members who will be showing how their solutions utilize GWG Specifications for the benefit of their customers, the GWG will present an update on activities at a press conference scheduled for Friday, April 7 at 3 pm in Seminar Suite 2 in the Gallery Area. Topics will include GWG’s progress on new specifications, members and packaging guidelines as well as the new Ghent Output Suite, an international group effort to create, test and publish test suites that can be used by all participants in the publishing workflow. Speakers at the press event are: • Erwin Danis – Chair of the Ghent PDF Workgroup • Menno Mooij – Marketing Officer, Ghent PDF Workgroup, will give an update on new members and recent activities • David van Driessche – Documentation Officer, Ghent PDF Workgroup, will present the Ghent Output Suite • Christian Blaise – Packaging Subcommittee Co-Chair for the Ghent PDF Workgroup – will give an update on the Packaging V3 progress made Recent GWG Milestones Ghent Output Suite Unveiled – The first series in the Ghent Output Suite consists of 11 PDF test patch groups covering the most common issues relating to PDF for print workflows became available in February. The Ghent Output Suite can be downloaded free of charge from www.gwg.org. 2005 PDF/X-1a Specifications – In fall of 2005, GWG released for the third time in its existence a series of specifications for the use of PDF/X-1a:2001 PLUS or PDF/X-3:2002 PLUS in vertical segments. These latest specifications are also available for download free at www.gwg.org Version 3 / 2005 specifications were made available for delivering print ready PDFs according to international standards for the following market segments: • Advertising for newspapers • Advertising for magazines • Commercial sheet offset printing • Commercial web offset printing • Commercial gravure offset printing The GWG packaging subcommittee also delivered its first packaging design specification. Other market segments are under consideration and are underway for 2006 specifications. New Members – The GWG membership continues to expand with leading companies such as Gradual Software and Dalim Software announcing membership so far in 2006. The two companies join nine new members representing leading graphic arts industry associations and suppliers accepted for membership by GWG in 2005 including: Associations – Cit-agm (Spain); FTA (U.S.); PDF/X-ready (Switzerland); and Viskom (Norway); and Leading vendors – Apago, Inc.; Callas; CGS; Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG; OneVision; and Quickcut Limited. GWG first opened membership to solution vendors in April 2004, and many prominent organizations have joined since that time. To date, GWG membership numbers 21 industry associations and 18 vendors representing 13 countries worldwide. GWG Compliant Applications – Since publishing its GWG Specifications, leading vendors have worked cooperatively with the organization to test for compliance. To achieve GWG compliance, an independent GWG testing group checks files generated by a vendor’s PDF/X creation software against expected results on more than 70 test criteria. To date, vendors who have formerly gone through testing for compliance include: Adobe, Agfa, Artwork Systems, Gradual Software, Dalim Software, Enfocus, Global Graphics Esko-Graphics, Kodak, Markzware, Quark, and QuickCut. For a full details on compliant applications visit: www.gwg.org