The print standard the document claims
Claim PDF/X-4, and have the document refused rather than written when it breaks the standard.
Summary
A printing works asks for a file that says what it is: which inks, where the blade falls, and every letter carried inside. That promise has a name — PDF/X — and a document that claims it is measured against it before it is written. A request that breaks the standard comes back refused, with what is missing named, rather than as a file that fails at the works.
Technically
Written at the top level of a request, under
"print"
print claims a print standard for the document and writes it into the document's own description. It is judged against the profile the colours are stated for, the boxes the pages state, the title, and the word on trapping: a claim with any of those missing is refused. pdfx4 is ISO 15930-7, the part built on PDF 1.6, and the one that keeps transparency and layers where the older parts flatten them away. The older parts are planned for a future version.
Request schema
-
print— string, optional, absent by default. The only value ispdfx4.
A document may claim an archival standard and a print standard at once only where the two rest on the same version of the format; the request is refused when they do not.
A whole request that draws it
{
"print": "pdfx4",
"output_intent": { "profile": "coated-fogra39" },
"metadata": { "title": "A catalogue, ready for the press" },
"page_boxes": [
{
"page": 1,
"bleed": { "x": 9, "y": 9, "width": 577, "height": 824 },
"trim": { "x": 18, "y": 18, "width": 559, "height": 806 }
}
],
"standard_fonts": [{ "name": "sans", "face": "helvetica" }],
"items": [
{
"type": "text",
"rect": { "llx": 60, "lly": 740, "urx": 535, "ury": 765 },
"content": ["A page the printing works can take as it stands"],
"font": "sans",
"font_size": 14
}
]
}The document as a whole
The numbers the reader shows A hundred letters in a single file What the document says about itself A file still readable in thirty years The password that opens it, and what may be done with it An invoice a person and a machine both read The address relative links are read against The PDF version the file declares What an image says about itself Files the document carries beside its pages Which carried files a page claims The identity card a single page carries The accessibility standard the document claims The standards the finished document is measured against
Where to go next
Every key of a request, in one page The other forty-one settings of a request