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, whatever version each of them rests on: the file is written as the version the archival part rests on and carries both claims, so a sheet claiming pdfx4, built on PDF 1.6, beside pdfa3b, built on PDF 1.7, is written as PDF 1.7.
Two things are refused instead. An archival standard and an accessibility standard that rest on two different versions, since each of them fixes the version the file is written as. And a version key, beside a print claim, naming a version none of the standards the request claims rests on.
A Whole Request That Creates a PDF
One name below stands for a font file: put the encoded file in its place, or send the file itself beside the description, as a supplied part of the same call. One page carries a real font already encoded, and its request posts as it stands.
{
"print": "pdfx4",
"output_intent": {
"profile": "press.icc",
"space": "cmyk",
"identifier": "FOGRA39",
"info": "Coated FOGRA39 (ISO 12647-2:2004)"
},
"metadata": { "title": "A catalogue, ready for the press", "trapped": "no" },
"page_boxes": [
{
"page": 1,
"bleed": { "llx": 9, "lly": 9, "urx": 586, "ury": 833 },
"trim": { "llx": 18, "lly": 18, "urx": 577, "ury": 824 }
}
],
"fonts": [{ "name": "body", "data": "PASTE_THE_FONT_FILE_BASE64_HERE" }],
"items": [
{
"type": "text",
"rect": { "llx": 60, "lly": 740, "urx": 535, "ury": 765 },
"content": ["A page the printing works can take as it stands"],
"font": "body",
"font_size": 14,
"color": [0, 0, 0, 1]
}
]
}The document as a whole
The Numbers Reading Software Shows A Hundred Letters in a Single File What the Document Says about Itself What the Document Says about Itself, Said Once Text Nobody Can Copy The Notes a Program Leaves in the File for Itself The Notes a Program Leaves on One Page The Data a Program Hangs on a Run of Ink A File Still Readable Decades from Now The Variable Print Standard the Document Claims 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 The Extensions to PDF the File Says It Uses What a Picture Says about Itself, and How It Is Read The Attachments the Document Carries Beside Its Pages Files the Document Names without Carrying The Attachments Shown as a Portfolio Which Attachments a Page Claims Which Attachments a Font Claims The Identity Card a Single Font Carries Which Attachments the Document's Card Claims A Document Card Written Elsewhere The Areas of a Page a Reader Measures In 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 JSON key of a request, in one page The other forty-one settings of a request