Overview

Elk Framework provides the needed services for a JDF (Job Definition Format) Device or Controller. JDF (another XML format) is a data format which describes common operations in the printing industry. By doing so, it serves as the answer to the printing industries requests to get up to speed with the digital age. It incorporates all printer related operations including: Sales, Administration, Pre-Press, Design, Production, and Post-Press by bridging the gap between each operation and the Management Information Services (MIS).

Elk Project goal is to create an JDF enabled application. In doing so, Elk creates a wonderful framework for testing or to serve as a stating point for others who wish to create a JDF enabled system.

Sponsors and Leadership

Elk is sponsored primarily by CIP4 and in part by Linkoping University's Center for Creative Media Technology (Sweden). The project leader is Claes Buckwalter, a Ph.D Candidate from Likoping University. Ola Stering (Uppsala University) is a major contributor, as well. I have already seen the great personal benefit of working with and learning from these two highly intelligent and hard working programmers.

Why Contribute

For the past ten years, the Printing Industry was my source of income while the Open Source community was my source of fun--Never the twain shall meet. Until now, I never found any open source printing project which also server the Digital Printing world on a grand scale. The only exceptions I can think of are ghostscript and CUPS. Although, these projects are not specific to the printing industry and as with most printing related open source projects (more found here on SourceForge's Printing Foundry ) there seems to be more focus on Desktop Printing and Device Drivers. However, my interests are in: High-Volume digital printing, Print on Demand, Variable Printing, Prepress, and Commercial Lithography workflows. So Elk, which embodies a bit of all of these, is a good fit.

I am looking forward to helping out with Elk any way I can. Feel free to contact me if you have questions regarding the Elk project. Also, will be attending Print05 here in Chicago this September and am willing to meet up with any interested parties.