Wisdom of the PDF Sage

My collegue, Kurt Foss, just wrote an excellent “How To” about using Acrobat 7.0.7 to create and validate PDF/A compliant document. I highly recommend it as a good starting point to working with PDF/A.

That said, I need to make users of these features aware that the files produced by Distiller 7.0.7 or those approved by Acrobat’s own preflight feature are actually NOT PDF/A-1b compliant. They will be flagged by other PDF validators (such as my own company’s PDF Appraiser product) as non-compliant - though PDF Appraiser will be glad to fix the problems that it finds.

The common problem(s) that will be encountered from Distiller-produced PDFs are in the areas of metadata and fonts. First, some of the metadata in the document is not correct according to the PDF/A-1b specification nor it’s corrigendum. Second, Distiller can create a font in the PDF that doesn’t meet all of the low level PDF/A requirements.

These are just two examples of things that PDF Appraiser checks that the Acrobat Preflight tool does not. It is but a very small sample of such items, as there are numerous areas of validation not covered by the Adobe Preflight check.

Bottom line - if you want to start using PDF/A - that’s great - go for it!! Start with what Adobe Acrobat offers. But don’t stop there…you WILL need other tools if you want to be REALLY SURE your documents are PDF/A compliant.