GHENT, BELGIUM - November 20, 2007 - The Ghent PDF Workgroup, an international organization comprised of users, associations and developers building best practices for publishing workflows; today announces the launch of the Soft-Proofing Ticket, an easy way for end-users to have additional, essential information about the approval conditions.
The GWG Soft-Proofing Ticket is now available for immediate use and downloading, at no charge, at the organization's web site:
http://www.gwg.org/siteen/content/specifications/job_ticketing.php?msi=78,82
The GWG Job Ticket Subcommittee investigates and defines best practices regarding different forms of job tickets. Now, after delivering the first Ad Ticket last year, the group is offering this new job ticket for the tracking of approval conditions.
The GWG Soft-Proofing Ticket uses Adobe XMP specifications to attach information to a PDF file. It provides both an easy-to-understand description about the user as well as accurate details about the viewing conditions in which the document was approved. It contains a list of user names and logins, approval date(s), description of the approval software; and essential detail includng monitor serial number and set-up, brightness level, white point values, color temperature and calibration status.
The GWG Soft-Proofing Ticket is the result of a collaboration between soft-proofing application vendors Dalim Software, ICS and KODAK; and user associations represented in the group, in particular, the UK Digital Ad Lab initiative that has been working on this subject for some time. As a result, the GWG Soft-Proofing ticket combines some basic information that can be easily read by end-users as well as advanced technical information that will allow different systems to work on the same files interactively.
Stéphane Georges, Software Product Manager at Dalim Software and Chairperson for the GWG Job Ticket Subcommittee says, "A lot of users are expecting to get more information on the approval stage when they receive a file. In a global market where different soft-proofing applications are used during the different stages of a document before printing, the challenge was to involve users and software vendors together. Once again, the GWG has shown its strength in this area."