Caldera is an industrial RIP intended for heavy-duty repro-shops and signage. It's not an amateur tool. It can drive wide-format inkjets, the big eco-solvent and heavy solvent printers and, I think, cutters.
Caldera comes with its own built-in ICC color-management and (if you buy the option) can make profiles with the Xrite/Gretag instrumentation thanks to an embedded Gretag SDK.
I'm sure of this as I helped Caldera integrate the DTP70 spectrophotometer - took one afternoon.
Caldera on Linux is intended to be used as a dedicated machine. You install a Linux box with their supplied distro, that box runs Caldera as a main application, accessible over the net. These days, what with cheap Mac minis, you could go for a dedicated Mac mini, and do the same there, or run Caldera on any other Mac, but in a big shop the price of the computer is the least of the worries of the owner, and you don't want anyone to tamper with the machine running the production flow.
I've used Caldera for photo reproduction. It works nicely. However it's a complex app, and not really intended for casual users.
Edmund
I have to say Caldera intrigues me. We're a Windows shop though (with much regret), so I'm really not sure. I'm very competent with Linux (I use an advanced distribution 100% at home), but I'm very hesitant to use it anywhere color is important. Last I checked, there's no kernel support for any spectrophotometers, and not even a mechanism in X for using ICC profiles on monitors. So we would be left buying a Mac, and another CS3 license.
I'm giving ImagePrint a closer look, I'm thinking we could offer tiered pricing where we use RIP supplied profiles for a lower cost, and custom profile all devices immediately before use for those who are more serious. We'd just have to use FlexiSign for the signage and cutting side of things, which would probably be the better path to take anyway.
I'm taking a look at the Ergosoft offering's too, hopefully the Z3100's spectro is supported by ColorGPS.
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