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ECM: Acceptance Solidifies around PDF/A as Standard Archival Format
In Europe acceptance of the ISO archival standard PDF/A has become widespread. The PDF/A Competence Center conducted a survey in late 2008, and compared to the 2007 numbers, there has been a steady increase in the number of companies using it. About half of all companies surveyed are or will be using PDF/A within the next twelve months. In fact, the use of alternative formats for archiving, like TIFF, JPEG and standard PDF, has dropped 5 percent from 2007. Companies are also beginning to use PDF/A to archive email documents.
PDF/A is a subset of Adobe’s popular PDF format, obtained by leaving out PDF features not suited to long-term archiving. The file format satisfies legal requirements and is designed to be able to be digitally readable far in the future.
The PDF/A 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).
Other key elements to PDF/A compatibility include:
* Audio and video content are forbidden.
* JavaScript and executable file launches are prohibited.
* All fonts must be embedded and also must be legally embeddable for unlimited, universal rendering.
This also applies to the so-called PostScript standard fonts such as Times or Helvetica.
* Colorspaces specified in a device-independent manner.
* Encryption is disallowed.
* Use of standards-based metadata is mandated.
