Adobe 9 PDF/A-1a or PDF/A-1b compatibility?

[MGR]

When I generate a PDF/A document with Converter (or creator) should Preflight from Adobe 9 show compliance with PDF/A-1a, PDF/A-1b, or BOTH?

Currently when I generate a PDF/A document in Converter 4 or Creator 4, it passes compliance for PDF/A-1b fine, but for PDF/A-1a, it shows:

document is not compliant with PDF/A-1a (2005)
- "structred PDF: Structure tree root entry missing
- Incorrect PDF/A-1a comformance level (must be "A")
- Markinfo missing

Can you let me know how to make Amyuni Converter and/or Creator 4 generate compliant PDF/A-1a documents if it's possible? Or is this something I even should be striving for?? I'm not even clear to me if it means that a single document is compliant ONE or the OTHER, or should it be BOTH? I'm not sure what my customers would want either - what's more common (what's "better"?)

[Jose]

Hello,

As you are aware the Amyuni PDF Converter will allow developers to create PDF documents compatible with both PDF/A-1a and PDF/A-1b.

The code to generate PDF/A-1a is very similar to 1b except that the calling application or developer should add its own "structure elements" or “tags” to give an indication about the structure of the PDF file. It is not just simply turning on that option.

In a (example) Word document you can group text into (example) a paragraph and Word knows that this group of text is a paragraph. However, when the document is converted into PDF, the PDF standard does not have the concept or does not know that this text is a paragraph. If the developer adds a “tag” to the PDF documents to indicate that that section of text is a paragraph, then the document becomes PDF/A-1a conformant.

The “tags” that should be added to a PDF document to make the document PDF/A-1a conformant are decided on by the developer and not by the printing application or the PDF Converter.

One method is added to insert structure elements:
- CDIntfEx::Document::SetMarkedContent PageNumber, StartX, StartY, EndX, EndY, PDFDefinedTags, ApplicationDefinedTags


PDFDefinedTags - are tags that are defined by the PDF specs
ApplicationDefinedTags - are tags that are defined by the application or developer, can be any valid PDF syntax


Below is a short code snippet which illustrates this:


‘=====
Dim cdi

Set cdi = CreateObject( "CDIntfEx.Document" )
cdi.Open "pdfa.pdf"

‘This code adds a structure type of CHAP and assign it a name
cdi.SetMarkedContent 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, "/S /Chap1 /Alt (Hello)", "/Author (Amyuni)"


cdi.SetMarkedContent 2, 0, 0, 0, 0, "/S /Chap2", "/Author (Amyuni)"
cdi.SetMarkedContent 3, 0, 0, 0, 0, "/S /Chap3", "/Author (Amyuni)"

cdi.SaveEx "pdfa-1a.pdf", 4 ' PDF/A Acrobat 8

Set cdi = Nothing
‘======


You can find more information on this in the Document Interchange section of the PDF specifications.

Hope this helps?

[MGR]

Thanks, definitely helps me to learn about areas of the product I had no idea about.