[October 13, 2000] "PrintTalk is a consortium of e-commerce and print management vendors seeking to provide an open XML standard to communicate spec, request for quote, quote, order and other business information used in the Graphic Arts industry. PrintTalk is a community formed by print management systems and e-commerce companies to define a best practice common and open communications interface between their products. The PrintTalk implementation supports use of the proposed Job Definition Format (JDF) standard for its job specification semantic and Commercial eXtensible Markup Language (cXML) to define the business objects. As part of the group's activities, it will seek to have its work recognized as an implementation of the proposed JDF standard. The PrintTalk interface specification will be distributed free of any license fees or royalties, in order to address the need for end-to-end connectivity in the printing industry. NPES serves as secretariat to PrintTalk."
"PrintTalk gives printer Business Management Systems (BMS) a single format by which to speak to e-commerce companies. PrintTalk provides a common means of communicating printing specifications and business needs between printers, their customers and their suppliers. Printing needs can change rapidly, as can customer needs. PrintTalk provides both the flexibility and control to easily adapt if a buyer chooses a new e-commerce provider, or to automate the way a printer works with suppliers and subcontractors."
Membership: The annual dues are $2,000. "Participation in PrintTalk is open to any company which develops software for graphic arts applications and which supports implementation of the JDF standard and an open communications interface between products. Regular members commit to (1) the purposes of PrintTalk, (2) first deployment of the PrintTalk implementation on the member's computer system or separate product within six months of joining, (3) supporting the current PrintTalk implementation as a standard component in subsequent software releases, (4) willingness to execute the current form of the membership agreement, (5) active participation in meetings and working groups and (6) public endorsement of PrintTalk's purpose, scope and timeframe in the form of a press release within 14 calendar days of joining." PrintTalk members included as of 2000-10-13: Avanti Computer Systems, Cirqit.com, Collabria, Inc., Graphic Arts IT, GraphiTech Computer Systems, httprint , Impresse, MediaFlex.com, MicroInk, Noosh, Inc., Pace Systems, Parsec Corporation, Press-tige Software, Printable.com, printChannel.com, Printers Software, Inc., Profit Control Systems, Inc., Streamline Solutions, and WAM!NET.
References:
PrintTalk Technical Briefing Paper. September 24, 2000. The following pages describe the technical philosophy used to develop the specification and the first four PrintTalk business objects: Request for Quote, Quote, Purchase Order, and Confirmation. Usage examples [in XML encoding] are furnished. The JDF intent list has been enhanced to provide a richer descriptive capability. While JDF describes the piece to be printed, PrintTalk's business logic is based on cXML, the widely accepted 'commerce' XML standard... The encoding used for the PrintTalk data exchange is XML, using a DOCTYPE declaration of 'PrintTalk,' validated with a PrintTalk DTD. The DTD is not yet [2000-10] published, but will be made freely available when it is ready. All PrintTalk objects contain two parts -- a Header and a Request, in the style of cXML The Header is in fact a cXML header, and provides user identification and authentication information. The Request contains the business logic..." [cache]
NPES "The Association for Suppliers of Printing, Publishing and Converting Technologies" - Serves as Secretariat to PrintTalk.
PrintTalk Operating Procedures and Membership Agreement. [procedures cache, MA cache]
See also: XML for Publishers and Printers (XPP)
See also: Job Definition Format (JDF)
