Talk:PDF/A

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the PDF/A article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Article policies

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Computing: Software Mid‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Computing, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of computers, computing, and information technology on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.ComputingWikipedia:WikiProject ComputingTemplate:WikiProject ComputingComputing articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.
	This article is supported by WikiProject Software (assessed as Low-importance).

Libraries Mid‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Libraries, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Libraries on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.LibrariesWikipedia:WikiProject LibrariesTemplate:WikiProject LibrariesLibraries articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Broken reference

Reference number 12 (http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/PDF/A#cite_note-pdfau-12) is broken and leads to a non-existing page. What is the general approach with broken reference links in articles? 93.82.86.207 (talk) 19:54, 30 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

PDF/A Example

Could anybody please add a link to a document that is actually PDF/A compatible. Even the White-Paper from the company which earns its money, by telling people how important PDF/A is, and which sells the "desperately" needed Software, even this Document itself does not pass the Preflight test from Acrobat. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.99.112.66 (talk) 14:02, 18 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Is this article NPOV?

This looks more like a commercial for the standard than a NPOV article. DriveBy27 00:21, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Which statements specifically do you think are POV and how would you suggest improving them? Mrhsj 05:02, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Its the whole section "Advantages of PDF/A." While there are certainly positive aspects of digital versions of collections of documents, the description here holds digital archiving of collections as more of a manifest destiny than an a business process. Costs of creating digital archives should be mentioned, and the possibility that the format will become obsolete and unreadable in the future. Conceded that setting the PDF/A standard is an attempt to avoid obsolescence of digital collections, but current fashionability of the standard doesn't guarantee the standard's future acceptance. IT history is littered with these kind of stories.

DriveBy27

I understand what the user above is saying, but this page serves as a very good start point for many people researching the only viable electronic archive document standard. The Software support section makes it look like only Adobe and OpenOffice support this standard. The fact is many other products support this ISO standard:

Adobe Acrobat
Microsoft Office 2007 with PDF add-in.^[1]
Neevia Technology docuPrinter 5.4^[2]
Nuance Communications PDF Converter 4.^[3]
OpenOffice.org will support PDF/A in its 2.4 release.^[4]
Print2PDF^[5]

Brandonsturgeon (talk) 19:31, 21 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

pdf has already established itself as the standard for document archival. Reader and converter software is very widespread and there are plenty of opensource implementations so it is unlikely to dissapear anytime soon. All pdf-a does is codify the best practice for making pdfs as portable as possible into a standard that can be validated. Plugwash (talk) 22:38, 22 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

References

^ "Microsoft", 2007 Microsoft Office Add-in: Microsoft Save as PDF
^ "Neevia", Neevia News for 2007
^ "Nuance", PDF Converter Professional 4 Press Release
^ "OpenOffice.org Foo", Exporting PDF/A-1a for long-term archiving. Last accessed 2008-01-11
^ "Software602", Software602 Press Release

pdf to pdf/A

are there any (preferablly free) tools that can take a regular pdf as input and produce a pdf/a as output? Plugwash (talk) 22:59, 29 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

In fact, Adobe Acrobat cannot convert PDF/X reliably into PDF/A - Basically, you better start with PDF/A if you want to be sure your docs are readable by everyone. The program xpdf works well for testing compatibility of pdf documents, since it is a PDF v1.4 program. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.215.115.31 (talk) 19:48, 1 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

PDF/A-2

What about standarts PDF/A-2a,2b and 2u that realized in Adobe Acrobat X? --Panfily was here (talk) 07:29, 30 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It would be good if someone wrote a section about PDF/A-2. Mrhsj (talk) 19:20, 30 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

PDF/A-2 is based on PDF v1.7 and will never be portable to software not created by Adobe. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.215.115.31 (talk) 19:50, 1 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The article currently states: "Converting a PDF (up to version 1.4) into a PDF/A-2 usually works as expected, except for problems with glyphs.". Please clarify whether this is a problem only for PDF/A-2. (And if so, then why so.) —DIV (120.17.53.130 (talk) 03:20, 21 February 2019 (UTC))[reply]

Moving 'Background' Section above 'Description'

I think the article would benefit the reader if the Background entry would appear above the Description. Just a thought.. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.245.160.114 (talk) 16:53, 12 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Error re: Open Office and transparency

I have just created an Open Office drawing (ODG file in OOo 3.3.0) containing elements with transparency ("Area"), exported it from OO using the PDF/A1a format option, and printed a hardcopy of the resulting document. In Acrobat the PDF file displays with an information bar stating: "You are viewing this document in PDF/A mode".

Viewing this PDF, both onscreen and as a printed document, shows the areas of transparency rendered correctly. They have printed as transparent (ie not printed) and are invisible onscreen.

The information given under the section of this article entitled: "Drawbacks", would therefore appear to be incorrect or in need of clarification. http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/PDF/A#Drawbacks

LookingGlass (talk) 10:39, 24 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

OCR hidden text layer

Please add information about the OCR hidden text layer. Does PDF/A have special requirements or restrictions? Are multiple such layers allowed?-96.233.19.238 (talk) 14:41, 4 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

"PDF/A in a Nutshell 2.0"

The "PDF/A in a Nutshell 2.0" link is dead. Is there a replacement? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.172.74.71 (talk) 14:56, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Some of the links are down

It would seem that at least a few of them can be ascribed to restructuring of the pdfa.org website.

Regards,

SB

When links are dead, besides noting on the Talk page, all users should feel free to be bold and

find the new 'live' URL, and update the links in the article;
if the same/equivalent content can no longer be found as a 'live' website under the same/related domain, try to find the old web page on the Wayback Machine;
if neither of the preceding work, or if you're short on time, within the article flag each individual link as needing an update by inserting the {{dead link}} template.

—DIV (120.17.53.130 (talk) 03:40, 21 February 2019 (UTC))[reply]

Compatibility to open different versions, and disadvantages.

Please add information to the article to explain what software can open each type of PDF/A file. Are there, for example, disadvantages to using PDF/A-3, for viewers not supporting PDF standard 1.7? If so, mention some common problems that may occur. —DIV (120.17.53.130 (talk) 03:24, 21 February 2019 (UTC))[reply]

PDF/A-1 ⇎ PDF/A-2

The article currently states: "PDF/A-1 files will not necessarily conform to PDF/A-2, and PDF/A-2 compliant files will not necessarily conform to PDF/A-1.". It is clear that PDF/A-2 supports "a number of new features" (listed in the article) that are not supported by PDF/A-1, so the second part of the above statement is obvious. However, it would be worth including an example of how a PDF/A-1 file may not conform to PDF/A-2. Maybe something to do with the font embedding? —DIV (120.17.53.130 (talk) 03:28, 21 February 2019 (UTC))[reply]

Embedding fonts

The article currently states: "All [embedded] fonts must [...] be legally embeddable for unlimited, universal rendering.". Please clarify if that is an 'off-line' responsibility of the person attempting to create the PDF/A file, or whether typically the PDF-creating software would perform that check 'automatically' itself, such as by interrogating a database (online or on disk) or interrogating the header of the respective font files. —DIV (120.17.53.130 (talk) 03:33, 21 February 2019 (UTC))[reply]

[1] "Microsoft", 2007 Microsoft Office Add-in: Microsoft Save as PDF

[2] "Neevia", Neevia News for 2007

[3] "Nuance", PDF Converter Professional 4 Press Release

[4] "OpenOffice.org Foo", Exporting PDF/A-1a for long-term archiving. Last accessed 2008-01-11

[5] "Software602", Software602 Press Release

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]