Published today the FAQ is based on a collection of real answers to real questions posed over a period of time by various industry players and has already been accepted for publication on a variety of industry web sites including: www.npes.org, www.pdfx-ready.ch/, www.pdfx.info, and www.eci.org
Martin Bailey explains, “This is not an official CGATS or ISO publication and is not a formal interpretation of any aspects of the PDF/X standards. It is based on actual questions that I have received from a wide spectrum of people in the print community and is sponsored by my employer Global Graphics for the wider benefit of the print industry.”
PDF/X is not an alternative to PDF but is a focussed subset of PDF designed specifically for reliable prepress data interchange. For designers the aim of the standard is to provide a digital content file that they can be confident will be printed predictably and correctly by the service provider. That requirement applies equally to a commercial print job printed on one site, and to a magazine advertisement placed in many publications and printed across the world.
The aim for service providers and publishers is to receive robust digital content files. In this context ‘robust’ means that they can be confident that the files will run through prepress without requiring rework or causing errors, and will allow them to meet (or exceed) customer expectations on press.
