Newsletter 8: Creating PDF/A with PDF Converter/Creator

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Joan
Amyuni Team
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Joined: Wed Sep 11 2002
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Newsletter 8: Creating PDF/A with PDF Converter/Creator

Post by Joan »

Version 2.51 of PDF Converter adds support for PDF/A

PDF/A is based on PDF 1.4 and places a certain number of constraints on PDF files to ensure that the files will remain readable with newer versions of operating systems and PDF readers.

PDF/A has now become an ISO standard: ISO 19005-1 norm for Electronic document file format for long-term preservation.

The main constraints that are placed on PDF files include:
- All fonts must be embedded with unicode conversion tables
- Colorspaces specified in a device-independent manner
- Audio and video content, Javascript and encryption are forbidden
- PDF files should contain XMP based metadata

To enable PDF/A when converting documents using PDF Converter, you should set the following flags in the image options property or function call:

#define IO_OUTPUTPDFA 0x00000008
#define IO_OUTPUTPDFA8 0x00000020
#define IO_XMPMETADATA 0x00000010

ImageOptions = IO_OUTPUTPDFA + IO_XMPMETADATA;
SetDefaultConfig
or
ImageOptions = IO_OUTPUTPDFA8 + IO_XMPMETADATA;
SetDefaultConfig

Having 2 separate flags for PDF/A and XMP will enable the developer to output XMP Metadata independently of PDF/A compatibility. In addition, the developers and users should always set Multilanguage support so that the fonts get properly embedded. Encryption should also be disabled by the developer or end-user.

Notes:
- Earlier versions of Acrobat 7 will flag our files as non PDF/A compatible. Make sure you are using Acrobat 7.0.7 or later to check for PDF/A compatibility.
- Acrobat 7 and Acrobat 8 do not interpret the PDF/A specifications in the same way. Starting with version 3.0 of Amyuni PDF products, we added the flag IO_OUTPUTPDFA8 to enable PDF/A creation for Acrobat 8. For questions about how can an ISO standard be interpreted differently with 2 versions of Acrobat, please ask Adobe.

New features added to version 3.0:
- Ability to check if a PDF is PDF/A compatible
- Ability to convert a regular PDF into a PDF/A file
- Ability to create PDF/A files with colors encoded in CMYK as opposed to RGB.
- PDF/A option now available from the user-interface of Amyuni PDF Converter, so this is not a developer only feature anymore.

Please check the product documentation for how to use the above 4 features.
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