Copyright 2013 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved. Acrobat X and PDF/A Standards Long Term Preservation of Documents | Rick Borstein, Sr. Solutions Consultant
Copyright 2013 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Acrobat X and PDF/A Standards Long Term Preservation of Documents | Rick Borstein, Sr. Solutions Consultant
Presenter
Presentation Notes
Rick Borstein Hello and welcome! Thanks for joining us today for our webinar “Acrobat X and PDF/A Standards”. My name is Rick Borstein and I’m a Senior Solutions Consultant at Adobe. In my day to day, I work with our larger customers to help them with their implementation of Adobe’s desktop tools. In the next hour or so, I’ll sharing information and providing a demonstration of PDF Standards, in particular PDF/A or PDF for Archiving. OK, Let’s get started.
Copyright 2013 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
What we’ll cover . . .
Slides
Digital Archiving
What is PDF/A?
Why use PDF/A?
PDF/A Standards (Flavors)
PDF/A Requirements
Workflow Considerations
Acrobat PDF/A Matrix
Demonstration
Wrap Up
2
Presenter
Presentation Notes
Rick To kick it off, I’m going to quickly cover our agenda for today. First, we’ll have a few slides to cover digital archiving concepts, some definitions, and information about the PDF/A standard, including the various PDF/A “flavors”. During the slides, we’ll also talk about PDF/A conformance and requirements and how the various versions of Acrobat can view and create PDF. Oh, and when I say conformance, by the way, I mean taking an existing PDF file and turning that into a valid PDF/A file. More on that later.
Copyright 2013 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Existing PDF Standards
PDF 1.7 (ISO-32000)
PDF/A archive
ISO-19005 PDF/A1a/b
PDF 1.4
ISO-32000 PDF/A-2, A-3
PDF/E engineering
ISO-24517 PDF 1.6
PDF/UA accessibility
ISO-14289 ISO-32000
PDF/X graphic arts
ISO-15930 PDF 1.4 ,1.6
Presenter
Presentation Notes
Rick There are a number of different PDF standards. The ones we’ve listed here are ISO– that is, International Standards Organization– standards. ISO, in case you’re not familiar with it, is a standards body founded in 1926 to help promote worldwide standards in manufacturing and commerce. Today, there are 163 ISO member nations, so ISO is truly a worldwide organization. ISO’s work is really broad and the organization has over 2700 technical committees and subcommittees which create and maintain standards of many types. I first learned about ISO many years ago when I was buying some film for my camera when I was a kid. That box of kodachrome has an ISO film speed rating and I had to ask my Dad what ISO was. That’s just one example among thousands of ISO standards. You might have noticed that each of these different PDF specifications have an ISO number assigned to it. For example, PDF itself is ISO-32000. In 2007, Adobe released the PDF Standard to ISO. ISO-32000 is essentially the Acrobat 1.7 spec which is the Acrobat 8 specification. PDF/A-1 is ISO-19005-1:2005 and it is based on PDF 1.4, the Acrobat 5 specification. So, you can see, PDF/A predates the ISO-32000 standard. You might be wondering, what is the relationship between ISO and Adobe? Adobe, as you might expect, has representatives on all the ISO standards bodies related to PDF and other technologies that impact the company. We have been very active in leading many of the committees.
Copyright 2013 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
What is PDF/A?
An ISO Standard
“... a mechanism for representing [PDF] electronic documents in a manner that preserves their visual appearance over time, independent of the tools and systems used for creating, storing, or rendering the files.” ISO Committee
A long term preservation format
Presenter
Presentation Notes
Rick So, let’s drill into PDF/A. Well, first of all, PDF/A is an ISO standard, so it a worldwide, non-proprietary specification. And, I’m just going to read this . . . Here’s what ISO says is the intention of the PDF/A standard . . . It’s “... a mechanism for representing PDF electronic documents in a manner that preserves their visual appearance over time, independent of the tools and systems used for creating, storing, or rendering the files.” PDF/A is designed for the LONG TERM preservation of digital material ensuring the material may be readable fifty years, a hundred years, or even much longer.
Copyright 2013 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Preservability – Format Comparison
Fidelity, presentation &
reliability
Access to content & searching
Dependencies – platform,
application, OS Access to
specifications File Size
PDF Image
Formats TIFF, JPEG,
BMP
?
Native Formats doc,
office ? ? ? ?
HTML ?
XML ? ? ? ?
Presenter
Presentation Notes
Rick When ISO met to choose a new digital preservation standard, they chose to base the standard on PDF. Why, you might ask, did they recommend PDF instead of say . . .TIFF? While image files like TIFF and JPEG are widely used for capturing and keeping information, they’re not particularly searchable, which limits their flexibility for easily searchable, multi-page documents. Why not Office file types like Word? One reason is that native formats suffer from platform and software dependencies – how can you guarantee that a copy of an operating system (or the hardware on which to run it) will be available even in 10 years’ time? What about XML? That seems to be a hot topic these days. Well, XML doesn’t really provide a human-friendly view of information, among other considerations. What about HTML? Well, you probably know that web sites looks different depending on the browser you use, so the preserving the visual appearance isn’t possible. Ultimately, PDF provided the best fidelity to the original document, combined with the best access to content without a dependency on platform or application. The development of an open format based on PDF also ensured that the specification would be publicly available and published so that anyone could access the information, even building their own viewer if the Adobe Reader were no longer in existence. The PDF/A working group decided on PDF because of its merits for long-term preservation of digital information.
Copyright 2013 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
When do you need to use PDF/A?
Regulatory Requirements
Federal Courts
State Courts
National Archives and Records Administration
California Public Utilities Commission
Preserve important documents
Protect your organization and reduce risk
Presenter
Presentation Notes
Rick Although many organizations are choosing PDF/A, there may be different reasons for doing so. You or your organization may be obliged to provide PDF/A files to a regulatory body. We’ve listed just a few examples here. Almost two years ago, the US Federal Courts announced on their PACER website that they are transitioning to PDF/A. We expect many state courts to follow their lead. Other regulatory agencies like the California Public Utilities Commission require PDF/A. I think makes sense, I would certainly hope that the records for nuclear power plants could be read hundreds of years from now. Enterprises are also choosing PDF/A to preserve their important archive documents like financial statements, compliance reports, technical information, etc. Another reason to choose PDF/A is to protect your organization and reduce risk. For example, let’s say you are an engineering or architecture firm. You may be called upon to defend your work in court, perhaps years from now. With computer systems changing at the pace we’ve seen, it’s hard to say how an AutoCAD 2010 file will open in AutoCAD 2025. If you save your key work in PDF/A, then you know you’ll be able to open that document years from now. Moreover, you can argue that you used the best practice available at the time for preserving documents.
Copyright 2013 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved. 7
PDF/A-1a and PDF/A-1b Specifications
PDF 1.4 Reference Acrobat 5.0
Recommended Features
Required Features
Prohibited Features
Presenter
Presentation Notes
Rick Let’s dive into the PDF/A specification a bit. In this case, I’m going to talk specifically about PDF/A-1a and PDF/A-1b. These PDF/A flavors are based on the Acrobat 5 specification, which is called PDF 1.4. The PDF/A spec calls out features which are required, features which are prohibited and features which are recommended. Let’s look into all the PDF/A flavors and compare them.
Copyright 2013 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Comparing PDF/A “Flavors”
PDF/A Version A-1a A-1b A-2a A-2b A-2u A-3a A-3b A-3u
Version Compatibility PDF 1.4 PDF 1.4 ISO-
32000 ISO-
32000 ISO-
32000 ISO-
32000 ISO-
32000 ISO-
32000
Embed all Fonts Required
Multimedia Prohibited
JavaScript Prohibited
Encryption Prohibited
Attachments Prohibited PDF/A attachments only Arbitrary Attachments
Rick Oh, how I loath sharing these eye charts, but I need to tell you what is allowed and not allowed in the various flavors of PDF/A. So, starting at the left side of the chart, we have PDF/A-1A and PDF/A-1B which are the original PDF/A Flavors. You’ll notice that the first line in the chart is version compatibility. That can be a little confusing, it least it was to me. One would think that the version compatibility is simply the version of the PDF file, right? Confusingly, that’s NOT what it means. Version Compatibility means that the file doesn’t have any features newer that those in the specification. For example, even though the PDF/A-1B specification states that version compatibility is PDF 1.4, a PDF 1.5 file can be verified as compatible. How weird is that? New versions of PDF/A -- called PDF/A-2-- were ratified in July 2011 and they are based on ISO-32000 the Acrobat 8 specification. There are a number of advantages to having PDF . . . Really any PDF, based on newer specifications. ISO-32000 compresses everything in the document stream and that results in smaller documents. All versions of PDF/A require all of the fonts to be embedded. We’ll cover how to do this during the demonstration. One aspect of the PDF/A is that the documents must be self-contained with no reliance on external players. For that reason, multimedia– such as movies and sounds– are not allowed. Since archives should not be changed, JavaScript or any other dynamic element is prohibited. Here’s another prohibition-- No encryption allowed. Well, that seems pretty obvious, After all, what good is your important document fifty years from now if you’ve forgotten the Open password? Next, Let’s talk about some of the differences between PDF/A flavors. Using Acrobat, you can embed a file into a PDF. That’s not allowed in the PDF/A-1 flavors. In PDF/A-2, you can embed files as long as the embedded files are also PDF/A. In the latest PDF/a spec, PDF/A3, you can embed just about any type of file such as Excel, Word, etc. Another difference is in the area of transparency. ISO 32000 PDFs support transparency which is important in print workflows and even for preserving fidelity of PowerPoint presentations, drop shadows in Word Art, Excel charts and more. Accessibility and tagging is another area where there are differences. A tagged or accessible PDF has structural information in it so that people who are visually impaired can use them with screen reading software on their computer. Tagging also provides captioning for the deaf. For example, let’s say you had a three PDF page with three columns. By “tagging” the document, the screen reading software knows how to read column 1, followed by column 2, followed by column three. Another difference between the various flavors is the requirement for searchable Unicode text. Unicode simply means that you can support many different languages with the same character set. A PDF you generate from Word would meet that requirement. But, what about a scanned image of, say, a paper memo? If you have some history with Acrobat, you probably already know that you could OCR the document in Acrobat to make it searchable. This is an interesting change that the PDF/A committee made when they rolled out PDF/A-2. One thing they recognized is that they didn’t have a standard for searchable, scanned documents. Searchable text is optional with PDF/A-1B and, for reasons we will see later, it can be really challenging to take paper documents and make them accessible. So, we now have PDF/A-2U which requires searchable text, but does not have to be tagged. Finally– and I can hear our legal customers on the call getting restless– is the way that PDF/A deals with metadata. Metadata is information about a file such as title, subject, author, text language, etc. Metadata could also be information about a element inside the file . . . For example, the metadata attached to a photo from a digital camera. Different PDF/A standards have different requirements regarding metadata. For example, document level metadata is always required for PDF/A files. Object-level metadata in PDF/A-1b, but is recommended, but optional. One difference in PDF/A-2 is that object metadata is supported. So, for example, a picture might be separately tagged with metadata.
Copyright 2013 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
More Importantly . . .
PDF/A-1a ensures the preservation of a document’s logical structure and content text stream in natural reading order. The text extraction is especially important when the document must be displayed on a mobile device (for example a PDA) or other devices in accordance with Section 508 of the US Rehabilitation Act. In such cases the text must be reorganized on the limited screen size (re-flow). This feature is also known as “Tagged PDFs”.
Rick’s Observations
You need to start with source documents such as Word files
Bringing a PDF in PDF/A-1a conformance is extremely difficult for existing PDFs
PDF/A-1b ensures that the text (and additional content) can be correctly displayed (e.g. on a computer monitor), but does not guarantee that extracted text will be legible or comprehensible. It therefore does not guarantee compliance with Section 508.
Rick’s Observations
Can bring most PDFs into compliance
Presenter
Presentation Notes
While I covered PDF/A-2, it’s so new that I don’t know of any government agencies that require it yet. So, I’m going to confine my discussion to the key differences TO YOU for PDF/A-1A and PDF/A-1B. 1A is sometimes called a “Full Conformance” file and you might think . . .well, I should do that. Unless you are specifically required to submit a PDF/A-1A file, you probably shouldn’t. Let’s say you have a PDF you want to make into a PDF/A-1A file. Tagging for accessibility can be very time consuming. Realistically speaking, the only best way to be able to create PDF/A-1A files is start upstream in the authoring application. Our Adobe PDF Makers– which are installed into Word, Excel, PowerPoint when you install Acrobat, all support tagging. PDF/A-1B is much more forgiving. It doesn’t require tagging. Scanned documents are fine and they don’t even need to be searchable.
Copyright 2013 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
What software should you choose to work with PDF/A?
PDF/A conformance requires a significant effort from the producers of PDF software.
Creation This stages deals with the generation of PDF/A conforming documents from various source formats.
Correction A PDF document may have to be modified in order to achieve conformance with PDF/A.
Processing Conformance must be preserved when a PDF/A document is modified.
Display This refers to the presentation of a PDF/A file in accordance with the requirements. Simply displaying a PDF/A file “somehow”, as is the case with many viewers, is insufficient.
Validation It is often necessary to verify that a PDF/A file actually conforms to the standard.
10
Presenter
Presentation Notes
So, you need to work with PDF/A. What software should you use? Selfishly, I’d have to say Adobe’s . . . PDF/A requires a lot of work on the part of developers. And, there’s more to getting it right than just creating a PDF/A file, if you can get that right. You also need to be able to correct issues, display PDF/A files correctly and be able to validate the results. So, PDF/A is more than a single bullet on a feature chart. There are lots of tools that work with PDF out there. I always like to say that Adobe does more with PDF than any other vendor and we do more right. We think that makes a difference.
Copyright 2013 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
PDF/A Workflow Considerations
11
Should I create all documents as PDF/A? Change docs? Combine docs?
Use “Near-to PDF/A” Settings for documents Embed all fonts Correct Version
Watch out for Metadata Scrubbers Remove PDF/A Information
Know how your tools treat PDF/A Many tools invalidate PDF/A without warning
Presenter
Presentation Notes
Rick Every organization is different, but I’d like to talk about a few issues that have come up with our customers who want to implement PDF/A in their organizations. One question we hear a lot is– should I routinely create PDF/A instead of using one of the other PDF settings in Acrobat? I don’t think there is a clear answer to that . . . It depends on your workflow and my advice in this area has changed because of new capabilities in the latest version of Acrobat. With earlier versions of Acrobat (before 11) having a PDF/A file made it difficult to edit. And, by editing, I mean inserting or removing pages, editing content, or combining files. In a lot of cases, you would need to remove the PDF/A tag from the document prior to editing. Still, if you regularly edit PDFs and add supplementary materials, you might want to finish the process, then conform that PDF to PDF/A. Instead, you might consider using settings that are near-to PDF/A and allow for easy conformance. I mentioned earlier, that one important requirement for PDF/A is that all fonts are embedded. If you change your default PDF/A settings to always embed fonts, it will be much easier to conform to PDF/A. Another consideration is the use of metadata scrubbers. Metadata scrubbing software is available from a variety of vendors, and we see it primarily in law firms, corporate legal departments and government agencies. These kind of applications are often integrated with Outlook and remove metadata from a variety of file types including PDF to prevent accidental disclosures. Unfortunately, removing PDF metadata also invalidates PDF/A documents. So, that could be a real problem. Finally, know how your other PDF tools treat PDF/A. Most PDF editing products do not warn you when you open or edit a PDF/A file and you can easily invalidate it.
Copyright 2013 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
PDF/A View Mode: New Changes
12
Presenter
Presentation Notes
One exclusive feature of the entire Acrobat product line– including Reader– is PDF/A view mode. We made some welcome changes in Acrobat XI in this area and I want to show you the difference. In Acrobat X (10), whenever you opened a PDF/A file, you’ll would see a blue bar alerting you that you were working with an archive file. If you wanted to edit the file, you’d need to remove the PDF/A tag which wasn’t particularly easy to do. It makes sense that you shouldn’t be able to edit an archive file, but we heard from lots of customers that this made late stage edits very challenging. So, in Acrobat XI (11), we added an “Enable Editing” button. We think this is a good compromise. You’ll be alerted that the file you have opened is PDF/A, but you can click the button to edit if needed. However, as the warning will tell you, enabling editing will revoke PDF/A compliance. You’ll need to resave as PDF/A to get it back.
Copyright 2013 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
PDF/A Features in Acrobat X Products
Use Actions to automate PDF/A Conversion , Conformance, Verification
Validate and Report PDF/A Compliance
Use PREFLIGHT to conform to PDF/A-1A, 1B, 2A, 2B or 2U
Use SAVE AS to conform to PDF/A-1A, 1B, 2A, 2B or 2U
Scan to PDF/A-1B using Create PDF from Scanner
Create PDF/A-1B using Adobe PDF Print Driver
Create PDF/A-1A using Office PDF Makers
PDF/A View Mode and Standards Panel
Pro Standard Reader
Presenter
Presentation Notes
While entire Acrobat product line supports PDF/A, there are some differences between Acrobat products that you should know about. Let’s take a quick look at the products. [build] Adobe Reader is installed on over 90% of all internet connected desktops. Adobe Reader supports PDF/A view mode, so they will be alerted that they are looking at an archive file. And, you may be thinking, well, Reader can’t really change a file, right? That’s not completely true. Reader XI users have access to all 21 commenting tools that Acrobat users do. And, now with Reader 11, Reader users save data in forms. The whole product line also supports the Standards panel which offers details about PDF/A. [ build ] Adobe Acrobat Standard can create PDF/A-1A files using the Office PDF Makers for Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Using the PDF Print driver, Standard users can create PDF/A-1B files from any application that can print. Acrobat Standard offers a great scanning interface that can scan, OCR, add metadata and save as PDF/A-1B in a single step. We’ll show that to you later. [ build] Next is Adobe Acrobat 11 Pro. Pro is a superset of Acrobat Standard which means that it offers the same set of PDF/A features plus several additional ones. One big difference is that Acrobat Pro can take existing, non-compliant PDF/A compliant PDFs and CONFORM them to the standard. Acrobat Pro can also do this via File> SAVE AS. Another important feature of Acrobat Pro is that it can verify and report on PDF/A compliance. It can even embed the report in the PDF/A file while maintaining adherence to the standard. Lastly, Acrobat Pro can automate many PDF/A steps. For example, let’s say you wanted to combine a Word file, Excel file and an existing PDF, add a unifying set of headers and footers and export the newly combined file as PDF/A? No problem. Acrobat Pro can automate many PDF-related operations including those that include conforming to PDF/A.
Copyright 2013 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Demonstration
PDF Creation
PDF/A 1-A PDF Makers in Word, Excel, PowerPoint
PDF/A 1-B Using PDF Print Driver and from a scanner
Creating Near-PDF/A PDF Settings
PDF/A View Mode
Standards Panel
Preflight (Acrobat Pro Only)
Verify Compliance
Report on Compliance
Bring documents into Compliance
Removing PDF/A Information
Actions and PDF/A
Presenter
Presentation Notes
Rick Well, here’s what we’re going to cover in our demonstration. Let’s get started.
Copyright 2013 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
PDF/A Resources
How to Conform to PDF Standards (Video) http://tv.adobe.com/watch/acrobat-xi-tips-tricks/how-to-conform-to-pdf-standards/
