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- PDF/An is the standard format used around the world for archiving electronic documents. It allows documents to be viewed in their original appearance across different software. A PDF/A file differs from a standard PDF file in that it forbids features that aren’t suitable for long-term archiving.
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What is PDF A?
What does a mean in a PDF file?
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How does a PDF/A file differ from a standard PDF file?
PDF/An is the standard format used around the world for archiving electronic documents. It allows documents to be viewed in their original appearance across different software. A PDF/A file differs from a standard PDF file in that it forbids features that aren’t suitable for long-term archiving.
1. What is PDF/A? Portable Document Format Archive, or simply PDF/A, is a file format developed to ensure the long-term preservation of electronic documents. This means your PDF documents will appear the same way they were created, regardless of software or hardware changes over time.
Apr 12, 2024 · PDF/A is an ISO-standardized adaptation of PDF, crafted for the digital safeguarding of records. It is an archival format of PDF that embeds all elements it contains such as fonts, colors, and metadata. Here is the main difference between PDF and PDF/A: Creating PDF/A documents.
- You Ask, The Pdf Association Answers
- General
- File Formats
- Long-Term Archiving
- PDF/A Characteristics
- Creating and Converting PDF/A
- PDF/A Validation
What is PDF/A, what does it have to offer, and how can I best use it? Answers to such questions are provided on this page. If you have a question that is not yet addressed here, let us know!
If I have PDF/A, do I no longer need paper copies?
The ability to replace paper with electronic documents is a primary goal of PDF/A. Digital documents should remain in electronic format, giving the user a wide range of additional features such as full-text search, digital signatures, and so on.
Up to now we've used "normal" PDF for archiving digital documents. Why is PDF/A better?
PDF/A is an ISO-standardized subset of PDF that eliminates certain risks to the future reproducibility of the content. Unlike normal PDF, PDF/A requires that everything necessary to precisely rendering the document is contained in the PDF/A file, including fonts, colour profiles, images and so on. PDF/A forbids dynamic content to ensure that the user sees the exact same content both today and for years to come.
How does PDF/A fare with respect to file corruption?
PDF/A is just another file-format, and provides no special protections against data corruption.
Can PDF/A files contain copyright information?
Yes. PDF/A allows users to save various metadata (for example the copyright) in the document using Extensible Metadata Platform (XMP) technology.
How are PDF/A and PDF/X related to each other?
The PDF/A and PDF/X standards are fundamentally compatible; i.e. a PDF file can generally conform to both PDF/A and PDF/X, but for maximum compatibility with modern PDF/X files, PDF/A-2 is highly recommended due to its support for transparency and layers.
Will future developments to the PDF/A standard make current PDF/A versions obsolete?
The ISO standard requires that future PDF viewing applications must be backward compatible, so that they are capable of correctly displaying older versions of PDF/A.
How can you best make PDF/A files text searchable?
PDF/A files are generally searchable, unless the file was created from a scanned paper document or image. In the case of scanned documents, OCR can be used to create searchable text.
Can PDF/A files include links?
There's no problem with including links in a PDF/A file. It should be considered, however, that external links will likely become invalid over time.
Can audio and video be used in PDF/A files?
PDF/A prohibits audio and video objects in PDF/A files.
Can "normal" PDF files be converted to PDF/A?
In general, PDF files can be converted to PDF/A. However, depending on the contents of the source PDF and PDF/A target selection, it's possible that some features cannot be transferred to a PDF/A file. In very general terms, PDF/A-1 is adequate for many archival purposes, especially for scanned documents. PDF/A-2, which is based on ISO 32000-1, is more flexible, and allows for richer graphics, including transparency and layers, and the embedding of other PDF/A files. PDF/A-3 is similar to PDF...
How can I tell if a font is protected by copyright and can't be copied into a PDF/A file?
Usually a program that creates PDF/A files will give a warning if a font file cannot be embedded. The problem is not very prevalent with standard western fonts, since most font developers allow their fonts to be embedded. However, some fonts (including many Japanese fonts) are copyrighted and cannot be embedded.
We currently have an archive of TIFF images. Can these files be converted to PDF/A with a reasonable effort?
There are many solutionsavailable that are geared towards converting large volumes of files (from different formats) into PDF/A.
How can I find out if a font is embedded?
When a PDF/A file is created, the creation software ensures that fonts are embedded. Many desktop PDF creation and editing tools allow you to determine whether your fonts are embedded or not. Generally speaking, without embedded fonts you don't have a valid PDF/A file. The only exception are fonts where the glyphs are not actually rendered, such as in the case of scanned documents where invisible glyphs are added by OCR software to make the scanned text searchable. In such cases PDF/A permits...
Are there programs that check and confirm the validity of a PDF/A file?
There are many such tools, from open source (including the industry-supported veraPDF validator) to commercial solutions.
What is PDF/A? The A stands for archiving and thus PDF/A is the standard for long-term archiving, which guarantees a unique representation of digital PDF documents in an unknown future. The basic principle for achieving this goal is that the PDF/A file must contain all the elements necessary to correctly display the document.
PDF/A is a file format that is intended to solve a basic problem of electronic data handling: how to make sure that documents can still be read or processed in the future. If you have been working with computers for some years, you may already have experienced that reusing older archived data can be a challenge.
Mar 23, 2022 · PDF/A is a compliant archiving format: meaning PDF/A can ensure the authenticity, integrity of your documents; provide more context than other file preservation file formats thanks to metadata; and can be a good answer to format or technology obsolescence. PDF/A is a ‘no vendor lock-in’: PDF/A can be opened and viewed in any supporting system.
