Drupa 2008 is being hailed by many as the "inkjet drupa". The noise level around inkjet is certainly high, as startups and established suppliers make their voices heard. The dozens of vendors, competing technologies, formats, approaches and consumables call to mind past drupas, especially 1995 - the "CtP drupa."

With computer-to-plate now a mature technology, installed in about half of all printers and the overwhelming majority of mid-sized and large printers, it is difficult to recall a time when people were arguing not only about which system was best, but whether CtP was worthwhile at all!

Today, most of those issues have gone away. The benefits and advantages of direct-to-plate are well acknowledged. There are fewer system manufacturers - three or four majors. The choices are all fairly safe. The products work, and the industry has moved on. True, there are still disagreements about which technology is superior, but they are tame compared to the early days of CtP.

Although there were only a few platesetter suppliers in the early 1990s, notably Gerber and Optronics, drupa 1995 was notable for the introduction of a thermal platesetter by Burnaby, BC's Creo Products. Creo had the previous year delivered a visible light device to RR Donnelley & Sons and showed it at the Agfa Technology Exposition in Boston. Other vendors followed, and by drupa (spring 1995) there was an explosion of offerings.

Thirteen years ago, even assuming a printer had the interest, workflow, infrastructure, and financial wherewithal to invest in computer-to-plate, the choices were bewildering and the future unclear. For technology, there were various visible light offerings, notably Argon Ion (488 nm); FD YAG (532 nm), Helium Neon (630 nm), infrared and near infrared (780-830 nm) and far infrared (YAG, 1064 nm), among others. So the "thermal" versus "visible" (then it was mostly green) debate has a long history. And, of course, there were positive and negative working plates, and some plates needed pre-heating and/or baking.

A particularly contentious area of debate for a number of years was machine design; whether flatbed or drum was superior, and more particularly, what the relative advantages of internal drum were versus external drum.

So where does that leave us today? We still have the thermal - visible (now focused on violet) debate, but most of the heat and acrimony are gone. We have fewer suppliers of either systems or plates. The major systems suppliers - none of whom manufacture everything they sell - are Kodak, Fuji, Screen, Heidelberg, and Agfa.

Others, such as Presstek and ECRM have smaller but reliable sales, while companies such as Krause and Strobbe are niche suppliers. The vast majority of digital plates sold in Canada are manufactured by Kodak, Fuji, or Agfa.

Most innovation is around making machines faster and more productive. The biggest change comes around so-called "chemistry- free" or "processless" plates. At drupa 2004, Fuji and Agfa pre-announced violet chemistry-free technology, and we expect to see working plates this year at drupa. But, even if they achieve acceptance and some degree of success, these will not be as revolutionary as what we saw in 1995. And that should provide some degree of comfort for printers, who know that their investment in new systems will not become out-dated and will continue to reap returns.