• PDF/A
  • PDF/A
  • PDF/A
  • PDF/A
 

PDF for long-term archiving

Digital Sustainability and PDF/Archive

PDF had a strong impact on the way people collaborate and share documents. The file format, which Adobe introduced in 1992, is the de facto standard for many organisations working with digital documents via the web, intranet and e-mail. In some countries the format is even mentioned in legal specifications regarding electronic archiving.

What is PDF/A?

  • PDF/A is not a new data format but a list of recommendations as to the usage of the functions of a specific version of PDF;
  • PDF/A is a list of recommendations considering long-term archiving;
  • PDF/A demands that all necessary elements for the presentation of a document are included in the file (fonts, images etc.);
  • PDF/A does not allow encryption or password protection bevause it would create a dependecy from external resources (keys);
  • PDF/A does not allow external references and embedded JavaScript code because they might not be available or supported in the future;
  • PDF/A can be applied to documents containing character-, raster- and vectordata;
  • PDF/A is platform- and device independent;
  • there are two subsets of the standard:
    • PDF/A-1a meets all basic requirements and contains metadata.
    • PDF/A-1b meets all basic requirements minimally necessary to preserve the visual appearance.

The current version of the standard is based on PDF version 1.6 and it is likely that there will be more versions of the standard supporting more recent technical developments.

Of course Document Dialog supports PDF/A. One area is document creation, where XML or other data files can be formatted into PDF/A for archiving purposes. Or conversion, where your current print files (AFP, Metacode, PCL en PostScript) can be converted into single PDF/A files. In addition Document Dialog can provide tools to check PDF files for PDF/A compliance.

 

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