Why PDF/A?

Posted on | November 30, 2009 | No Comments

The new ISO 19005-1 standard that defines PDF/A format is the digital document standard for the long-term preservation of tax, legal, historical and other important documents.

Archiving in PDF/A format to satisfy your corporate, HIPAA, Sarbanes-Oxley or other legal requirements is the best way to ensure that you will be able to search, retrieve, view and print your documents in the future with the full legal fidelity of the original. PDF/A format will not become a “legacy” or “incompatible” file format as PDF technology evolves.

This is why the International Standards Organization in conjunction with the US Courts, Library of Congress, ARMA, AIIM, NARA and many more corporations, governments, and other major institutions around the world have approved this new standard for PDF files for long-term archiving of documents. This new standard defines a subset of PDF 1.4 format and composition rules that will withstand the test of time.

PDF/A is device-independent, self-contained, self-documenting (with XMP metatags) and transparent to direct analysis with basic tools for indexing, etc., it inhibits the use of PDF functionality that could cause problems in future releases. If you generate PDF documents from a product that complies with this new PDF/A standard, your files will be safe and viable for the years to come.

The best way to generate PDF/A documents is directly from Adobe Acrobat V7.08 or above. The next best way would be from a product that was verified to be PDF/A compliant. For those who have applications that cannot generate PDF/A directly, but who generate print streams for HP PCL printers and do not want to print, scan, convert to PDF/A, only then OCR for indexing and text search-ability, you need one of the following PCL to PDF/A transformation products from PageTech:

  • PCLWorks Program for single user/desktop applications. Also includes a GUI program to convert TIFF or JPEG files to PDF/A format.
  • PCLTool SDK Option I for custom, tightly integrated applications calling .NET compliant .DLL libraries (with sample source code) to convert PCL, TIFF or JPEG into PDF/A format. Includes tools to extract text from the PCL for decollating multiple document print streams into individually named PDF/A files, metatags, external indexes and other advanced functions.
  • PCLTool SDK Option III (PCL2PDF) for server-based applications using PageTech’s exclusive, scriptdriven PCLXForm program to convert PCL to PDF/A format with ASCII text extracted into a separate file. Also includes TIFF or JPEG to PDF/A console program.
  • PCLTool SDK Option V (Custom PCL2PDF) for complex server-based applications using PCLXForm program to convert PCL to PDF/A and other formats. Includes tools to extract text from the PCL for metatags, external indexes and other advanced functions. Also includes TIFF or JPEG to PDF/A console program.

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Category: PCL Conversion, PCL to PDF
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