Hello all,

I am a web developer/ programmer that has been working with a commercial solution for web to print for the last two years. The software is geared towards the HP Indigo 5500. As a result of my study of this software and other similar solutions I have come to the following conclusions.

1. Though there are standards they are never used. PPML is not PPML/GA as it should be so that CheckPPML and other programs can review the code and create previews.

2. JDF is a mess in all cases. The output from most commercial products (plugins) that create the format cause Acrobat to freeze or they are viewed as incomplete.

3. VDP is useless as none of the commercial solutions actually connect to a RDBM Server. They require exports of CSV, excel etc

4. No one has a web based packaged solution.

5. PPML org and JDF org have membership requirements and fees that I think are hindering the development, use and popularity of open standards in developing web to print solutions.

To fix this I am going to start an open source project based on

BSD Licensing on all software and documentation
PHP5 (or other open source languages such as Python)
MySQL or CouchDB
Zend Framework
Javascript/JQuery frontends

To produce :
PPML/GA files that will run in CHECKppml
JDF files

The future: Produce true open source software for validating PPML and JDF files

If you are a web developer or programmer interested in collaborating on this project you can contact me through carl at easypic.s