Applications of perturbative QCD to deeply virtual Compton scattering and
hard exclusive electroproduction processes require a generalization of usual
parton distributions for the case when long-distance information is accumulated
in nonforward matrix elements of quark and gluon light-cone operators.
We describe two types of nonperturbative functions parametrizing such matrix
elements: double distributions F(x,y;t) and nonforward distribution functions
F_\zeta (X;t), discuss their spectral properties, evolution equations which
they satisfy, basic uses and general aspects of factorization for hard
exclusive processes.Comment: Final version, to be published in Phys.Rev.
