Darmstadt, Germany (June 25, 2002) - The International Cooperation for the Integration of Processes in Prepress, Press and Postpress (CIP4) today announced several new technical development groups as work begins to further expand the Job Definition Format (JDF). Moving upstream from prepress A new working group, "Origination and Prepress", provides a forum for resolving issues arising in all the stages of a print workflow before the jobs reach the press. The new working group is chaired by Koen van de Poel of Agfa. This group includes two task forces, "Preflight" and "Asset Transfer". The Preflight task force will define how the validation of graphical content files against requirements and against the capabilities of a print company can be controlled in a JDF- based workflow. The interim task-force chair is Markzware’s David Dilling. "Our continuing commitment is to support the needs of the prepress, printing and publishing industry," says Patrick Marchese, president of Markzware. David van Driessche, Director of Software Development for Enfocus Software, says "It's a great idea to extend JDF's reach into the preflight arena. After all, correctly preparing a job is inherently linked to the characteristics of the final output process, and JDF is tying all of this together". The second new task force, Asset Transfer, will be working to extend the existing Art Delivery process definitions in the JDF specification for delivery and exchange of digital assets, and is chaired by Israel Viente of Vio Worldwide. Miranda Clegg, MD Sales & Marketing, Vio Worldwide says "Vio is delighted to be playing an active part in driving the JDF standard forward by chairing the CIP4 Asset Transfer sub group within the Origination and Prepress working group. Vio sees the usage of JDF for controlling, monitoring and managing the transfer of digital assets as a critical part of the total workflow. The implementation of JDF as part of the distributed workflow is key to giving customers the flexibility to send data as it best suits them, and to be received by other users in the most efficient way to feed straight into their production processes. Vio firmly believes that JDF will make a tangible difference, opening the industry up to new efficiencies and providing the means to ‘handshake’ between all the different workflow partners and processes involved in the production of media today." Focusing on interoperability The "System Behavior" task force has also been promoted to full working group status and renamed to "System Behavior and Interoperability". The charter of this group, chaired by Doug Belkofer of Printcafe Software and co-chaired by Heiner Schilling of MAN Roland, is to clarify the interactions between components of a JDF workflow. This, together with the work already underway in CIP4’s "Device Capabilities" working group, will provide a strong and stable foundation to enable open, multi-vendor system integration. Doug Belkofer, Printcafe’s Director of Integration, says "Printcafe is looking forward to helping jump-start further adoption of the JDF standard, and we feel strongly that the System Behavior and Interoperability working group will help drive this." "The formation of these new teams demonstrates that CIP4 will be delivering on its promises to enable end to end workflows based on open systems integration", says Martin Bailey of Global Graphics Software, CEO of CIP4.