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_��(X;t), discuss their spectral properties, evolution equations which they satisfy, basic uses and general aspects of factorization for hard exclusive processes.

Final version, to be published in Phys.Rev.D