The open specification of print
One meaning across every language of print — one identity for every product.
PTPGE — the Periodic Table of Print & Graphic Elements — is an open specification for describing a printed product: what it is, before the job ticket. It gives buyers, printers, suppliers, software and AI agents the same words and the same identity, so that a request, an offer and a job all mean the same product.
727 terms — 56 of them product templates — with permanent URIs, in 12 languages.
IdentityA complete specification resolves to one fingerprint, one mark, one page.
- Open
- CC BY 4.0. Free to implement by anyone — a MIS, a web-to-print platform, a marketplace, an agent. Reference endpoints: a REST API and an open MCP server. No key for reading.
- Who
- Held by PTPGE, a non-profit association (being formed). First implementation: GutenLex. Pilot printer: Trykkverk.
The words
Every element of a printed product has one permanent URI and one meaning — in every language.
- Structure
- Groups → categories → elements. Products; configurations (formats, setup models, orientation); features (colours, surface finish, embellishments); substrates; finishing; production technologies — and the variables that bind them. A term is a concept in the vocabulary: something print is. Company names are not terms; makers and printers have their own registers.
- Product templates
- 56 templates. Each says which variables apply and which values it allows — the envelope. Four required axes give an identity; everything else is offered, never demanded.
- The buyer's question
- Every variable carries the question a buyer is asked — «How is it put together?», not «Which setup model?» — in 12 languages.
- Permanent URIs
https://ptpge.org/v1/…— dereference to JSON-LD (SKOS). Labels vary by language; URIs do not. Changes are additive and dated; every data version has a changelog.
From a sentence to a verifiable spec
Describe
Plain words, a screenshot, a URL or an agent prompt.
Resolve
Every field maps to a canonical PTPGE term.
Fingerprint
The configuration hashes to one ptpge-cfs/1 identity.
Match
Buyers, vendors and agents meet on the same identity.
Browse
One product, one fingerprint
A complete specification — a product and the values of its required axes — resolves to one content-addressed identity: computed by anyone, the same from any system. What is not specified is not applied: a finish you do not ask for, you do not get.
- ptpge-cfs/1
- Canonical serialisation and SHA-256 of the resolved configuration. Three profiles, nested: spec (the commons) ⊂ offer (a vendor's) ⊂ job.
- The mark
- A monochrome, human-recognisable seal drawn from the fingerprint (ptpge-mark). The QR carries the identity for machines; the mark is for the eye. Same fingerprint, same mark, always.
- The page
ptpge.org/f/<hash>returns the full configuration. Register once, resolve forever.- Why
- A vendor SKU names a vendor's product; a fingerprint names the product. Two agents given the same words reach the same fingerprint — that is what makes a request, an offer and a job comparable.
One configuration, one seal
Every configuration resolves to one SHA-256 fingerprint (ptpge-cfs/1). The mark is for the eye, the QR for the camera, the hash for systems — same configuration, same seal, always. Scan the QR and the permanent page answers at ptpge.org/f/…
The mark is one-way — recognisable and verifiable, never decodable. The QR carries the data; fingerprints are permanent and never retired.
Why not a product ID?
A flat ID can only name what someone predefined. Print is combinatorial — format × pages × substrate × finish × colour easily runs past a million variants of one product, so no catalogue can enumerate them, and every vendor ends up inventing SKU strings that bake configuration into identity in a private grammar.
The PTPGE fingerprint goes the other way: identity is derived from the configuration itself — variable bindings on open PTPGE URIs, canonically serialized (ptpge-cfs/1) and hashed. Same configuration, same fingerprint, from any system, at any vendor. Nothing to pre-register, nothing to run out of — and a reorder is simply the same hash resolved again.
Method: PTPGE Technical Note No. 1 (DOI 10.5281/zenodo.21451592). Invented by Patrik Knutsson; published under CC BY 4.0.