Wisdom of the PDF Sage

Back from the LONG weekend holidays here in the US (and in Canada, which I was visiting)…I thought I’d write a bit about some of the standards related to PDF from ISO (International Standards Organization).

PDF/X - this is the first of the standards the ISO built around PDF. The X is for “eXchange”, specficially blind-exchange among prepress providers (such as advertisers to magazines). There is current PDF/X-1a (for CMYK & Spot colors), PDF/X-3 (for color managed data) and PDF/X-2 (which no one has ever actually implemented!). PDF/X-4 and PDF/X-5, which introduce newer PDF features such as transparency and layers/optional content are on the way!

PDF/A - this is the recently finalized (Oct 2005) standard for “long term archival storage of electronic documents as PDF”. Where it took PDF/X a number of years to gain traction, PDF/A is getting adopted (or in the process of adoption) by both vendors and users VERY quickly! Currently, the version is PDF/A-1a (for tagged & highly metadata-aware documents) and PDF/A-1b (for the average document). PDF/A-2 is currently in discussion to match the advances of PDF/X-4.

PDF/E - focusing on the needs of the Engineering community, PDF/E is currently in late stages of standardization and coming together nicely. It leverages the latest and greatest features of PDF that are targetted for engineering, such as 3D and object-level metadata.

PDF/UA - still very early in discussion, this standard is focused on providing Universal Accessibility to PDF documents by building on the work already present in PDF for Section 508 compliance.

And there are even more that are just starting up…So keep your eyes peeled for more versions of PDF focused on specific market segments and needs.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 5th, 2006 at 10:56 am and is filed under PDF. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.