In the works since 2002, the new standard defines document parameters for long-term archiving.The International Organization for Standardization has approved PDF/A, a standard for creating PDF documents for long-term archiving.
"This document will ensure that a PDF document will be rendered as it was created 50 years from now regardless of the reader used," said Betsy Fanning, director of standards and content for AIIM, a non-profit international organization dealing with enterprise content management. AIIM and NPES, an organization representing suppliers for the printing and publishing industries, initiated the work on a standard in 2002, said Fanning.
Fanning said the PDF/A standard defines an open file format for PDF archiving of electronic documents, with no proprietary language. PDF/A is a subset of PDF.
By early 2003, the draft standard was introduced at the international level to the ISO, in order to have worldwide participation in developing an Adobe PDF specification and creating a subset of tags to allow for integrity of long-term archiving and rendering of all electronic document formats.
Melonie Warfel, director of worldwide standards at Adobe Systems Inc., said Adobe began work on developing a standard in May 2002 with the U.S. courts and U.S. National Archives and Records Administration and then created a formal standards working group in October 2002.
For PDF readers and PDF vendors it also means the readers will have to be developed in compliance with the PDF/A standard. If the reader device is not in compliance, then it will not render the PDF correctly. Both the authoring software and the reader software must be compliant with PDF/A, said Fanning.
On the standard's implementation, Susan Sullivan of the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration said, "Federal agencies and other users should be aware that PDF/A does not stand alone. PDF/A must be implemented in conjunction with mechanisms to manage records according to legal and domain specific requirements."
On the long-term future of the standard, Fanning said Adobe had already provided support for a draft version of PDF/A in Acrobat 7. She also noted there are several other vendors working rapidly to meet the standard. Fanning said originally in the developing stages of the standard, there were several vendors at the table helping produce the standard and it is expected that they will soon offer compliant products.
"The big thing is this standard has universal appeal, not only for archivists, but for virtually any company that depends on maintaining records or libraries. This will ensure the integrity of electronic documents for long-term preservation," said Fanning.
Click here to read more about PDF/A.
Ted Padova, PDF guru and author of Adobe Acrobat 7 PDF Bible, said the standard is a good thing for users and vendors.
"I think it's good news for all, the one advantage being that the PDF/A standard is embraced by the ISO standards committee, and that committee has strong influence in many different sectors. Because it is an ISO committee standard, for all intents and purposes in today's terms it's probably one of the most reliable formats and will ensure intact and original PDFs will be around for a long time. Because of that, I think users should be very confident in using the format. We're not dependent on a single entity to drive the compliance," said Padova.
The standard will be published in September and available for purchase at the AIIM bookstore. It will also be available through the NPES Web site.
