Cambridge University Press Builds PDF System

Cambridge University Press in the UK has established a PDF system based around Enfocus Software's Pitstop Professional.

Cambridge University Press in the UK has established a PDF system based around Enfocus Software's Pitstop Professional.

The software is a specialist Acrobat plug-in for pre-flighting and correcting PDFs.

Dave Tovee, the content management systems manager at Cambridge University Press (CUP), said: "We work as an integral part of the University, publishing books and journals.

Most of the content of the books originates from the university but a portion of the work, such as the typesetting, is outsourced, in some cases to India.

Consequently we have established a PDF system for pre-flighting and correcting PDFs.

We are upgrading to Acrobat 7.0, together with Pitstop Professional 6.5, which supports the latest PDF1.6 format." Tovee continued: "CUP's PDF Profiles are a subset of the PDF specifications developed by the Ghent PDF Workgroup.

To support the project we employed the services of certified Adobe and Enfocus PDF consultants, Certitec for its updated 'detect and repair' Pitstop software.

The vast majority of CUP's work is printed via our own pre-press department.

Some files are printed abroad, mostly in Europe and China and since implementing Pitstop we have had no complaints from abroad about the PDFs that we send out." He added that the process starts when the Distiller job options together with the Pitstop PDF Profiles are posted on its website for suppliers to download and use when creating PDFs.

The PDFs are then sent to CUP via FTP and are batch-processed through Pitstop Server, which pre-flights the files, validating them against the relevant PDF profile.

"We have been working with the software now for almost two years and have multiple copies installed.

Everyone involved has a copy of the Enfocus software.

This empowers the individual and speeds up the process.

We are able to keep track of any edits made to the file allowing different versions of a file to be compared and for those edits to be rolled-back at a later point." Cambridge University Press is the oldest printing and publishing house in the world and has a reputation worldwide for producing high quality academic books and journals.

CUP publishes more than 2,000 books and 150 journals a year across 200 countries.

The organisation has included works from the likes of Newton and Einstein, as well as the Cambridge Modern History series and internationally recognised textbooks and dictionaries.

Dave Tovee concluded: "Cambridge University Press has a big organisation worldwide and Enfocus Pitstop technology has speeded up our processes and given us confidence with the files we receive and send out.

Accuracy and speed are a vital part of customer service today.".

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