InPageFormate

InPageFormate is a page formatting standard intended to describe the layout, typographic rules, and media placements for printed and digital publications. It provides a machine-readable description that can be interpreted by various publishing tools to ensure consistent rendering across devices and channels.

Developed by the InPageFormate Consortium in the 2010s, the standard emphasizes separating content from presentation. It aims to support multilingual typesetting, scalable layouts, and reusable templates, while remaining compiler- and platform-agnostic.

Technical overview: The format defines an XML-based document model with elements for pages, margins, columns, master pages, text streams, images, tables, and color specifications. It uses a formal schema to validate layout integrity and supports both left-to-right and right-to-left scripts, plus language-specific typography rules.

Extensions and interchange: IPF files carry a .ipf extension and are designed for interchange between authoring, proofing, and production systems. The format supports templates, style sheets, embedded resources, versioning, and metadata, and can be exported to PDF, EPUB, or raster formats as needed.

Adoption and use cases: Publishers, catalog producers, and magazine houses employ InPageFormate to automate production pipelines, reduce errors, and maintain design consistency across multiple editions and devices.

See also: InPage, XML, PDF, EPUB, typesetting.