Can Adobe Reader process JDF job tickets?

Question

I'm trying to generate a PDF that can be viewed interactively in Adobe Reader, but also, upon printing, selects different paper trays based on the page. (Some pages are supposed to use stationery, whereas other must not.)

PDF itself apparently doesn't support this form of metadata by design (as discussed e.g. here), but apparently, JDF is an appropriate format, and can be embedded as XML in the PDF.

What's less clear to me is if Adobe Reader does anything useful with that metadata: if a PDF with embedded JDF information is printed, does it parse the JDF and choose paper trays? Can I use PDF portfolios for this purpose instead?

My goal is to both let the user view the PDF in Adobe Reader interactively, and, upon printing, automatically selecting different paper trays.

(The far less convenient alternative would be to write a custom app to do the printing.)

Answer 1

You are right, PDF describes the artwork while the JDF describes the metadata about print. However, JDF is targeted to industrial printing systems rather than for desktop printers. As far as I know does Adobe Acrobat Reader not support this kind of feature based on a JDF.

In order to control the different paper trays of your printer, you may setup your printer several times - one for each tray and switch the flag "default printer" in the background programmatically. Another idea could be to use the Acrobat Reader only for viewing purposes and using the command line for printing.

There are concepts of how to put metadata into the PDF directly (see: https://confluence.cip4.org/display/PUB/PDF+Intent), but it could take a while until this specification is gonna to be implemented.