October 2006 Impact of PDF/A on Content Management by Christy Hubbard
1. The Impact of
PDF/Archiving on
Content
Management
Christy Hubbard
Sr. Product Marketing
Manager, Adobe Systems
2006 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.
2. Agenda
What brought us here?
Considerations re: document formats
PDF/A specifics
Update on adoption and futures
2006 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.
3. The Preservation Problem
Costs associated with preservation
Electronic records becoming reality in today’s environment
What is the best option for preserving electronic documents
over archival time spans?
TIFF?
Native Formats?
PDF?
XML?
2006 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.
4. Key characteristics needed for
long-term document preservation
Device Independent
Can be reliably and consistently rendered without regard to the hardware or software
platform
Self-contained
Contains all resources necessary for rendering
Self-documenting
» TIFF?
Contains its own description
» Native Formats?
Unfettered
Absence of technical file protection mechanisms » PDF?
Available » XML?
Authoritative specification publicly available
Adoption
Widespread use may be the best deterrent against preservation risk
2006 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.
5. Why Not Archive “any” PDF?
PDF by itself is not suitable as an archival format
Can include features incompatible with current archival requirements
Encryption
Embedded files
PDF documents not necessarily self-contained
Can depend on system fonts and other content drawn from outside the file
Multiple PDF development tools on the market
Inconsistency in the file format (all PDFs are not created equal)
2006 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.
6. Why a “Standard” Version of PDF?
Needed to ensure preservation of PDF documents over extended periods of
time, and further ensure that PDF documents will be rendered with
consistent and predictable results in the future
PDF is too powerful and flexible
Higher degree of reliability than required by the published specification
Compatibility into the future
Reliable migration
Developed and maintained by an external organization
2006 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.
7. What is PDF/A?
Final archiving format - not living documents
International Standard specifies the use of the Portable Document Format
(PDF) suitable for the long-term preservation of electronic documents.
Long term preservation of black and white and color compound documents as
electronic data
Based on the business and technical needs of governments, regulated industries,
corporations, educational institutions and libraries
PDF/A does not address
specific physical methods of storing these documents such as the media and storage
conditions
required computer hardware
operating systems
2006 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.
8. Why PDF/A Matters
Lower the cost of your archiving infrastructure
Replacing multiple formats with a single format to support
Open-standards ensures a variety of platforms can be used
Eliminate the overhead of less efficient standards
Increase the value of your archived documents
Leverage the full-fidelity of PDF and the archive standards of PDF/A to integrate archiving,
presentment and external retrieval
ISO endorsement secures long-term viability of PDF/A archives
Mitigate compliance risks
Anticipate potential move towards PDF/A archiving guidelines
Provide rapid access to documents for regulatory, legal and law enforcement inquiries
Enable retention policies to dispose of qualifying documents
2006 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.
9. PDF/A Specifies
Subset of the PDF Reference Version 1.4
Specifies required features
Specifies recommended features
PDF 1.4 Reference
Specifies prohibited features
PDF/A
2006 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.
10. How PDF/A differs from PDF
Promotes/Recommends:
Promotes/Recommends:
•• Persistent, device-independent format
Persistent, device-independent format
•• Committee based development
Committee based development
•• 3rd party solutions
3rd party solutions
•• Use of metadata
Use of metadata
•• Lossless compression
Lossless compression
• • Valid structure tags (PDF/A-1a)
Valid structure tags (PDF/A-1a)
Requires:
Requires:
•• Preserve the visual appearance (PDF/A-1b)
Preserve the visual appearance (PDF/A-1b)
•• Embedding of all fonts
Embedding of all fonts
•• Annotations to be clearly identifiable
Annotations to be clearly identifiable
Prohibits:
Prohibits:
•• Encryption and password protection
Encryption and password protection
•• Embedded dynamic objects
Embedded dynamic objects
•• Proprietary or non-embeddable fonts
Proprietary or non-embeddable fonts
•• External links
External links
2006 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.
11. Some detail of PDF/A Requirements
Two levels of conformance
File should be
1a Full (e.g. Tagged PDF)
Unambiguous, predictable
1b Minimal (e.g. not Tagged PDF)
Self-contained – no references
Annotations restricted to known annotation
Stable presentation (no dynamic action or types
forms)
External actions restricted, no dependence
on external content
Uniform file format (header, trailer, no
encryption) Readers not required to act on hyperlinks,
but may
Device-independent rendering of
XMP metadata “Adobe XML Metadata
graphics
Framework”
Embedded fonts, character encoding Forms based on appearance, not data
Transparency prohibited
Only elements of PDF1.4 allowed…
no extensions
2006 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.
12. Current Participants – partial list
Administrative Office of the US Courts IBM
AFNOR Image Solutions
AIIM IRS
ANSI Library of Congress
Appligent Merck
BSI National Archives – US, UK, Sweden
EMC/Documentum NPES
Glaxo Smith Kline PDF Sages
Global Graphics Pfizer
Harvard University Victoria Archives, Australia
Hewlett Packard Xerox
Honeywell
2006 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.
13. Government Use of PDF/A (to date)
Sweden
National Archives
France
Ministry of Equipement/Sonactra
Ministry of Finance/ADAE, Ministry of Finance/DGI
Ministry of Health
EDG GDF/GDMI (nuclear sites)
AFNOR
USA
National Archives and Records Administration
Currently accepts PDF but will accept PDF/A according to their PDF Transfer
Guidelines
2006 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.
14. Current Status & Timeline
Work organized by accredited standards bodies
AIIM International (the Association for Information and Image Management)
NPES (The Association for Suppliers of Printing, Publishing and Converting Technologies)
International Standards Organization (ISO) status
Ratified May 2005; final standard published by ISO in September 2005
Working group has started defining next version (to be based on PDF 1.6 reference)
Supported by multiple vendors and products:
Adobe Acrobat 8, Acrobat 3D, LiveCycle PDF Generator – www.adobe.com/
Visioneer - www.visioneer.com/
LuraTech - www.luratech.com/
PDF/A-1a
Compart Systemhaus GmbH - www.compart.net
PDF Tools AG - www.pdf-tools.com PDF/A-1b
More information: www.aiim.org/standards
2006 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.
15. Considerations for Next Versions of PDF/A
Based on PDF 1.6
The following specific features are under consideration for
inclusion in Part 2 & Part 3
JPEG 2000 image compression
More sophisticated digital signature support
OpenType fonts
3D graphics
Audio/video content
Consistency with PDF/X, PDF/E, PDF/UA
2006 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.
16. Get the details
Developed and maintained by a
recognized standards organization
Standard defines:
Prohibited features
Required features
Recommended features
Levels of conformance
PDF/A-1a
PDF/A-1b
Go to:
www.aiim.org/bookstore or
www.npes.org
2006 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.
17. PDF/A
If this committee presses forward with its plans
to standardize PDF for archival purposes, gets
PDF-A codified as an ISO standard and
everyone calling for PDF/A adopts it . . . PDF
has a good shot to exist far into the future,
perhaps even beyond the lifecycle of Microsoft
Windows.
— PDF Zone.com, 3/2004
2006 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.
