Coming in 2005: international PDF-archive standard.PDF-Archive (PDF-A) could become an international standard by early next year. The open-standard PDF (Portable Document Format) The de facto standard for document publishing from Adobe. On the Web, there are countless brochures, data sheets, white papers and technical manuals in the PDF format. , created by Adobe Systems Adobe Systems Incorporated (pronounced a-DOE-bee IPA: /əˈdoʊbiː/) (NASDAQ: ADBE) (LSE: ABS) is an American computer software company headquartered in San Jose, California, USA. , has become a widely used format for distributing documents on the Internet because it preserves their original look and makes copying and editing them difficult. The PDF standard is popular with governments for archiving electronic documents but is not suitable for archiving permanent records. For that, federal agencies expect to use the new modified version, PDF-A. The PDF-A standard will be a slimmed-down version of PDF 1.4, a version of the published, freely available PDF specification, and will be useful for formatting document files that contain multiple pages of text, raster images, or vector graphics. Unlike PDF, PDF-A will contain type fonts to ensure that electronic documents will look the same in the future as they did when they were created. The standard will not be suitable for archiving music and video files, according to members of the PDF-A Committee, which includes representatives from Eastman Kodak, IBM (International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY, www.ibm.com) The world's largest computer company. IBM's product lines include the S/390 mainframes (zSeries), AS/400 midrange business systems (iSeries), RS/6000 workstations and servers (pSeries), Intel-based servers (xSeries) , Xerox, the Internal Revenue Service, the Library of Congress, and the National Archives and Records Administration. However, it will be extremely useful for archiving large volumes of electronic documents. Among federal archivists and records managers, PDF-A is viewed as one of two leading data format candidates--along with extensible markup language See XML. (language, text) Extensible Markup Language - (XML) An initiative from the W3C defining an "extremely simple" dialect of SGML suitable for use on the World-Wide Web. http://w3.org/XML/. (XML XML in full Extensible Markup Language. Markup language developed to be a simplified and more structural version of SGML. It incorporates features of HTML (e.g., hypertext linking), but is designed to overcome some of HTML's limitations. )--for preserving future access to electronic records and documents. The proposed PDF-A standard specifies what should be stored in an archived file by prohibiting, for example, proprietary encryption schemes and embedded files such as executable scripts. How do the PDF and PDF-Archive formats compare? * Non-archival format * Text, raster images, vector graphics, etc, * International Organization for Standardization International Organization for Standardization (ISO) Organization for determining standards in most technical and nontechnical fields. Founded in Geneva in 1947, its membership includes more than 100 countries. (ISO (1) See ISO speed. (2) (International Organization for Standardization, Geneva, Switzerland, www.iso.ch) An organization that sets international standards, founded in 1946. The U.S. member body is ANSI. ) standard * Encryption and executable scripts permitted * No type fonts included PDF-A * Archival format * Text, raster images, and vector graphics only * Future ISO standard * Encryption and executable scripts not permitted * Type fonts included |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion