Mission
When the Ghent Workgroup was formed, it was to address the issue of PDF file verification. Specifically, printer and publisher associations in different countries required a consistent set of rules that should be followed by PDF documents used for printing advertisements and various commercial print jobs. This international discussion led to different sets of rules for different market segments, and – ultimately – the foundation of the international non-profit organization that the Ghent Workgroup is today.
The specification subcommittee still is the heart of “rule development” for the Ghent Workgroup. It is a highly technical subcommittee that looks at which requirements the markets has or is developing, and updates the Ghent Workgroup specifications to match those requirements. Sometimes new specifications are developed in the subcommittee directly, other times see different subcommittees develop initial ideas, after which the specification subcommittee helps streamlining those into ‘real’ specifications.
Current activities
While the activities of the specification subcommittee change over time, these are some of the topics we work on:
- Updates to the existing GWG 2022 specifications.
- Preparation work for a future version of the specifications that would be based on PDF/X-6 and PDF 2.0.
- Discussions and specification work around “Intent preflight” – this is using job metadata (such as number of pages, dimensions, expected separations…) to preflight the PDF on top of any technical preflight.
- Discussions on making preflight information more accessible for end-users.
Chairs
The specification subcommittee has two co-hairs:
- David van Driessche, Chief Evangelist at callas software
- Loïc Algon, Product Manager – Enfocus PitStop Line at Enfocus Software.