(pressebox) München, 03.04.2009, With the the »Bavaria Report on PDF/A Validation Accuracy« PDFlib GmbH has released a comparative review of PDF/A validators. It assesses the output of PDF/A validation tools for conforming as well as for non-conforming documents. The goal is to provide guidelines for users, to encourage vendors of PDF/A validation tools to optimize their products and to increase the accuracy of PDF/A validation. The Bavaria Report is available for free download at www.pdflib.com/….
Results
After conducting the Bavaria tests PDFlib GmbH can certainly say that the status of PDF/A validation is considerably better than in the previous years, and that the Isartor test suite and PDF/A TechNotes published by the PDF/A Competence Center (www.pdfa.org) have significantly influenced the quality of PDF/A validation. While the Bavaria Report reveals shortcomings in the current product generation, PDFlib GmbH hopes to contribute to further improvements and to help vendors of validation tools to enhance the accuracy of their products. This will ultimately increase the acceptance of PDF/A as a reliable standard for long-term document preservation.
Evolution of PDF/A validation
The ISO 19005-1 standard for PDF/A for long-term archiving has been published in 2005. Early PDF/A adopters had a hard time regarding validation. Acrobat 7.0 introduced PDF/A validation in its Preflight plugin, but it predated the final standard and implemented only an earlier draft version which differed in important details from the final standard. The TechNotes and the Isartor test suite (which has been published in summer 2008 by the PDF/A Competence Center) contributed significantly to a consolidation process regarding PDF/A validation. Acrobat 9 implements the majority of those clarifications, with a few important corrections and additions in Acrobat 9.1. Several third-party validators have had a similar history of increasingly stricter checks.
PDF/A and PDFlib GmbH. PDFlib GmbH is interested in PDF/A validation tools for several reasons:
- As a member of the PDF/A Competence Center PDFlib GmbH is involved in a lot of technical and non-technical discussions regarding PDF/A conformance. The availability of reliable PDF/A validation tools is a crucial factor for the success of PDF/A.
- The PDFlib GmbH products PDFlib+PDI 7, PLOP 4, PLOP DS 4 offer PDF/A-aware processing. This means that a processing step maintains PDF/A conformance: if the input conforms to PDF/A it is guaranteed that the output also conforms to PDF/A. While the products offer PDF/A-compliant features such as XMP metadata injection, digital signature, or page recombination they do not include full-blown PDF/A validation. Instead, they assume conforming input. The customers of PDFlib GmbH need reliable PDF/A validation tools in order to check if this is true.Über PDFlib GmbH
PDFlib GmbH is completely focused on PDF technology. Customers worldwide use PDFlib products since 1997. The company closely follows development and market trends, such as ISO standards for PDF. PDFlib GmbH is one of the founding members of the PDF/A Competence Center and participated in the design and implementation of the Isartor test suite for PDF/A. PDFlib GmbH products are distributed all over the world with major markets in North America, Europe, and Japan.
About the PDFlib product family
PDFlib is the leading developer toolbox for generating and manipulating files in Adobe’s Portable Document Format (PDF). PDFlib’s main targets are dynamic PDF creation on a Web server or any other server system, and to implement »Save as PDF« in existing applications. PDFlib has proven itself in a wide range of other use cases as well. PDFlib is available in three different versions: PDFlib, PDFlib+PDI (PDF Import), and PDFlib Personalization Server (PPS) with the PDFlib Block Plugin for Adobe Acrobat.
About PDFlib PLOP and PDFlib PLOP DS
PDFlib PLOP (PDF Linearization, Optimization, Protection) offers a straightforward way to linearize and optimize your PDF files for fast Web delivery. In addition, you can apply or remove Acrobat security features to your PDFs. PDFlib PLOP DS applies digital signatures which can be verified with Adobe Reader or Acrobat.
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