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Dave McAllister, Director, Open Source and Standards Lessons from document archiving – PDF/A

© 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.

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Archiving Requirements: Live

§  Repeat the current experience at some future time. §  Including active nature and that depends upon being able to provide a suitable “execution environment” in

the future.

§  Interactive and dynamic types

§  More powerful computers and displays available §  New delivery mechanisms and devices

§  invent new metaphors that move away from our more static paper-based ideas §  Digital Rights Management

§  two-fold challenge §  obsolescence of new (emerging) types

§  base technologies may become obsolete

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Digital Documents have existed for some time

§  PDF (1993)

A comprehensive format for representing documents and forms

§  High !delity, high precision text layout with embeddable fonts

§  High-end device independent, color managed graphics features

§  Platform independent de!nition

§  Interactive elements & content

§  Multimedia & 3D

§  Security & digital signatures

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"at’s great for the web, screen viewing, eBooks, etc. But what about people who just want reliable printing and/or archiving?

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Digital Document Archive needs

§  A document format that

§  Conveys critical information

§  Can be rendered accurately (predictable and consistent)

§  Offers metadata support

§  Standard schemas

§  Custom Schemas

§  Provenance, version, history, audit

§  Can incorporate marginalia

§  Notes, comments, mark ups

§  Can be “signed” (tamper proof)

§  Provides a de!nition of retrieval

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Enter PDF/A

§  PDF/A-1 (ISO 19005)

§  Long term preservation of black and white and color compound documents as electronic data

§  Combinations of character, raster, vector and other data

§  Provisions for capturing semantic information

§  Preservation and retrieval of appropriate metadata

§  “static paper” ++

§  Annotations & Marginalia

§  Metadata

§  Signatures

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PDF/A-1 Details

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§  More restrictive “coding” of PDF details

§  Ensures less ambiguity when implementing

§  Based on PDF 1.4 & PDF/X-3

§  All PDF/X-3 documents can potentially be minimally conforming PDF/A documents without any changes

§  Reduces ambiguity between different vendor's implementations

§  Removal of any complex or potentially confusing graphic concepts

§  No transparency

§  Limited colorspaces

§  No Security/Encryption

§  All data must be self-contained §  No external resources

§  Fonts MUST be embedded(!!)

§  Limited annotation support §  No movies and sounds

§  No JavaScript

§  Links are stored but not executed

§  Metadata based on Adobe XMP

§  Low level font requirements §  Matching font widths

§  CharSet/CIDSet

§  CMaps

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Levels of Conformance

§  Minimal Conformance (PDF/A-1B)

§  Meet the standard/basic requirements

§  Full Conformance (PDF/A-1A)

§  Tagged PDF

§  Improved searchability via Unicode mappings

§  Comprehensive metadata recommendations

§  Font data

§  Document “pedigree”

§  Audit trail

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Not just File Format – Viewer Requirements

§  Color management

§  Use of output intent

§  No use of alternates (except for Spot & DeviceN)

§  Speci!c handling of DeviceGray

§  Font handling

§  ALWAYS use embedded data

§  Interactivity

§  Annotations & form !elds are non-interactive

§  must use the stored appearance

§  provide access to data/contents

§  Hyperlinks are “questionable”

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PDF-A/2

§  Remain focused on “static paper” metaphor

§  No interactivity, 3D, multimedia, etc.

§  Updated to reference ISO 32000-1

§  Ensure as close to 100% forward compatibility as possible

§  A PDF/A-1 document SHOULD be also a valid PDF/A-2 document

§  However, valid technical changes to ensure long term reliability were preferred over compatibility.

§  Predominantly in the areas of fonts & metadata

§  Continue to maintain compatibility with other ISO standards

§  PDF/X-4

§  PDF/E-1

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Some new and important features in A-2 (and A-3)

§  Improved compression technology/Smaller !les

§  JPEG2000

§  Compressed XRefs & Streams (aka “Full Compression”)

§  Transparency

§  PDF Layers (aka Optional Content)

§  Whatever you view on screen, must print!

§  PDF Packages/Collections

§  May only contain other PDF/A documents

§  Digital signature enhancements

§  Certi!ed Documents

§  Improved revocation checking

§  PAdES (ETSI TS 102778) Compliance required

§  Improved tagging/accessibility

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"is is the only major change to PDF/A-3 Embedded !les can be of any format

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New work under consideration

§  Archiving PDFs with embedded 3D

§  Archiving of digitally signed PDFs

§  Archiving of source material inside the PDF

§  Secondary issues

§  Archiving of “documents of record”

§  Rich forms, such as those based on XFA or with embedded JavaScript

§  Desire to archive the business logic with the values

§  May or may not be digitally signed

§  Archiving of video and audio embedded into PDF

§  New features of ISO 32000-2

§  Portfolios, RichMedia, GIS, etc.

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Summation

§  "e basic requirements for multimedia archiving mirror those for digital documents

§  "e scope of formats is wider

§  "e envelope of contents is substantially larger

§  Documents themselves may be considered a form of media

§  Arising complexity will exist as the envelope for documents encompasses media types

§  No media type is entirely separate from any other

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