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It is no doubt that PDF/VT will grow and improved and by time more applications will developed using this relatively new technology
Still a question that most of the systems - heritage- even newly developed applications - specially in high volume output are prodcuing output as text , CSV, and of course XML !!
And these format neww Postscript to handle the personalization and VDP!
If these system applications produced PDF - as most of it has tools to produce PDF but also they have tools within it to provide simple VDP and then no need for second step VDP software e.g. PDF/VT to handle the formatting!
I am not defending postscript!
As I am sure the future will be for PDF/VT but PDF engine is released in 2006 !
Only in 2012 Software developer start to implement it !
Only in 2013 Printer manufacturers started to use it seriously and not solely but side by side with PS 3 ! as you can see it took them more than them 6 years to do that!
So when do you think they will abandon Postscript totally and it will be died as you said !! may be within another more 6-8 years 
unless one printer manufacture or software company will develop PS 4 with ICC profiling and layering etc
You mentioned that Adobe will not do it.
Ironically still Adobe Postscript the most famous , most important programing language across the last 15-20 years compared to the effort invested in it and other computer languages!
I mean Adobe never put any engineering in postscript since year 2000!! the latest documentation/revision is dated 2000 !
Can you think where C++ or C# will be if development stopped for two years ! may be 10th of languages died over the last 10-15 year but still Postscript released in each print device and implemented in all VDP software!
Adobe created a miracle called Postscript and only Adobe can kill it but no so fast 
Dr. Adam
Still using input raw format like Text , CSV , XML and use Postscript for formatting will give much more speed and great more features in formatting than using PDF/VT. - it was even confirmed through the presentation !
Exactly what additional formatting features do you think Text, CSV, and XML with PostScript can give you when in fact PostScript is in fact has only a subset of the PDF imaging model?
Most large systems systems like Billing , Invoicing , Core Banking can output in any way you want , text , CVS, Tab Delimited , XML and also PDF ! it is faster and require no additional programming to output in CSV or XML (widely preferred) not PPML but just XML , tags without any image or graphics.
Strictly speaking, those systems you refer to print “variable data” just as every data processing program back to the days of the earliest business applications did on such dinosaur equipment as IBM 1403N1 line printers with streams of EBCDIC characters and carriage tape controls. And that's exactly the type of printing that is gradually but surely going away. For that transactional material, PDF/VT is certainly usable, but may be overkill. But when we talk about VDP these days, we generally are referring to personalized marketing materials that have minimal if any transactional data but are very graphically-rich and simply cannot readily be expressed with the page description languages or the protocols you enumerate.
When I said Adobe never put any engineering I meant development! Of course the support and liaison with manufacturer and OEM will remain. Every desktop laser Printer in the world has PS built in or an option !!
Adobe does have “engineering resource” working on our PostScript implementation albeit not new language features.
Perhaps this is might be a point to you too !! As All RIP manufacturers Like EFI , Creo , had invested millions dollars over the last 20 years to provide Rip based on Postscript with its color management etc !
Creo no longer exists other than the remnants of a brand name. Creo was acquired by Eastman Kodak a number of years back. Both EFI and Kodak are actively investing in Adobe PDF Print Engine support for PDF/VT. PostScript for them, like most of our OEMs is pretty much a maintenance issue.
All Software vendors for VDP had also invested multi million dollars to create their systems based on raw data input to Postscript engine!
And they are all now investing primarily in supporting PDF/VT output because simply stated, they can't get all those great graphics effects that they can generate to print otherwise!
Last but not the least , many end users had created their work and training using famous VDP packages which is based on input raw data (CSV , Text , Records, XML , EBCDIC etc ) and output to Postscript.
It is totally irrelevant what the raw input is to the VDP packages (such as XMPie, Darwin, DirectSmile, etc.). Certainly those will continue to be either direct database links or CSV, plain old text, XML, etc. Users who are trained to input such data to VDP packages don't need to be retrained for PDF/VT output. In fact, for most printers, handling PDF/VT will be much easier than other formats since it enforces a single, common PDF print publishing workflow including support for viewing, preflighting, proofing, etc. How in the world do you preflight PostScript, PPML, or any of the other formats other than perhaps ... converting them somehow to PDF?!?
- Dov
Yes the imaging model in PDF has more features.
But postscript commands have full capability of programming language features while PDF commands are marking type commands.
This give more control to build conditional insertion of text , images based on logical variable and fields in the data stream at different locations , in simple words Postscript can build more complex document with VDP intense of graphics and text.
Any way I am sure the difference will be reduced if Adobe continue on developing PDF/VT technology and keeping the PS with the same features as in year 2000 without any increase.
Unless third party vendor took the investment for PS 4 which is most probably could happen - but you made it clear Adobe will not doing it.
VDP software companies have already introduced their products in 2012 supporting PDF input data stream. up to my knowledge GMC and PlanetPress. and Xerox as I see started in 2013 to use PDF Engine side by side to PS 3 in their Color (production level) e.g. XJ75
Cheers
Adam.
" It is totally irrelevant what the raw input is to the VDP packages (such as XMPie, Darwin, DirectSmile, etc.) ... "
XMpie , Darwin , DirectSmile Are plugin to InDesign or QuarkXpress !
What I meant was VDP print applications which were built using famous packages like PlanetPress , Pres , Document Creation Server DCS , Lytrod , Elixir , VIPP
These packages deal with File system direct such as hot folder or network folder where your hundreds , thousands or Millions of raw files resided there or submitted directly for printing e.g. text , CSV or XML format
The output document might range from simple VDP job which is just page/font formatting with several forms merged up to highly complicated marketing document with personalization , conditional promotions and ad , different pages layout etc .
The Developers who are trained on the above mentioned Software packages will require more time/training, buy more software options to build the same output if the input stream has changed from text to CSV or XML or to PDF !
- Incase of moving to Input PDF stream might cause problem as the software and feature doesn't allow you to create the expected output!
PlanetPress for example is having another product for PDF data stream ! some of those software packages mentioned do not support (yet) Input PDF ! Xerox VIPP and DCS !
This might be cumbersome or an obstacle to move to PDF/VT technology while if PS 4 appeared they would all love to upgrade 
That's why it might be easier to tell the system application who is responsible for generating the data stream to maintain the output in raw format to generate the desired output!
Cheers
Adam
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