PDF/A

ISO 19005-1:2005 is an ISO Standard that was published on October 1, 2005:

  • Document Management - Electronic document file format for long term preservation - Part 1: Use of PDF 1.4 (PDF/A-1)

This standard defines a format (PDF/A) for the long-term archiving of electronic documents and is based on the PDF Reference Version 1.4 from Adobe Systems Inc. (implemented in Adobe Acrobat 5).

The standard specifies two levels of compliance:

  • PDF/A-1a - Level A compliance in Part 1
  • PDF/A-1b - Level B compliance in Part 1 (less stringent requirements)

A new version "PDF/A-2" is currently being worked on. It is based on the PDF Reference Version 1.6.

The Standard does not define an archiving strategy or the goals of an archiving system. It identifies a "profile" for electronic documents that ensures the documents can be reproduced the exact same way in years to come. A key element to this reproducibility is the requirement for PDF/A documents to be 100 % self-contained. All of the information necessary for displaying the document in the same manner every time is embedded in the file. This includes, but is not limited to, all content (text, raster images and vector graphics), fonts, and color information. A PDF/A document is not permitted to be reliant on information from external sources (e.g. font programs and hyperlinks).


Contents

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Advantages to PDF/A

Electronic documents have countless advantages over traditional archiving formats (e.g. paper or microfilm). Improved accessibility alone may substantiate the implementation of an electronic archive. Some advantages of a PDF archive over a TIFF or a paper-based archive are:

  • PDF stores objects (e.g. text, graphics), allowing for an efficient full-text search in an entire archive. TIFF is a raster format and must first be scanned with an OCR (optical character recognition) engine.
  • PDF files require only a fraction of the memory space of original or TIFF files, without loss of quality. The smaller file size is especially advantageous by electronic file transfers (FTP, e-mail attachment etc.)
  • PDF format can be optimized. The optimization can be focused on images (e.g. scanned checks) or extracting structured data (e.g. voucher information). TIFF treats all file information the same.


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Literature


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PDF/A Center of Competence

The PDF/A Center of Competence provides extensive support for questions about the new standard and its implementation.


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See also