Feds Help Create PDF Archiving Standard

(Via Government Computer News) Federal agencies are grappling with the issue of archiving documents for long-term storage. Software or operating systems in use today may be hard to locate 50 years from now. Agencies need to ensure the information they have is available for the public. To this end, a number of federal agencies are working to create an archiving version of the Portable Document Format. The version will be submitted to the International Organization for Standardization for approval as an international standard and a draft of the PDF/A standard is expected by early next year with a final standard out by the end of 2005.

This standard addresses the need for long-time archiving of PDF documents. Adobe openly publishes the specifications of PDF, so other organizations, such as commercial companies and government organizations, can create their own software that reads or creates PDF files. Such software, however, may add extra features or functionality that will not be availability to all users. PDF/A will codify a stripped-down version of PDF that will not rely on external technologies and will be platform-agnostic. The standard proposes, for instance, that all the fonts that are used in a PDF/A document be embedded in the document itself. PDF/A will also standardize aspects of meta-tagging, color representation and multiple language support.

Posted by Tom on May 24, 2004