PDF/A Export
What is PDF/A
- PDF/A is a file format and an ISO Standard for the long-term archiving of electronic documents.
- PDF/A is in fact a subset of PDF, obtained by leaving out PDF features not suited to long-term archiving.
- There are different levels of PDF/A
- PDF/A-1b - Level B compliance in Part 1
PDF/A-1b has the objective of ensuring reliable reproduction of the visual appearance of the document. - PDF/A-1a - Level A compliance in Part 1
PDF/A-1a includes all the requirements of PDF/A-1b and additionally requires that document structure be included (also known as being “tagged”/“Tagged PDF”), with the objective of ensuring that document content can be searched and repurposed. PDF/A-1a also requires Unicode character maps. - PDF/A-2 is based on ISO 32000-1
A-2 a very recent standard and is not widely used (yet)
PDF 1.7 and is defined by ISO 19005-2:2011, published on June 20, 2011 under the formal name Document management – Electronic document file format for long-term preservation – Part 2: Use of ISO 32000-1 (PDF/A-2).
PDF/A Minimum Requirements
- Things that have to be full filled to be PDF/A compliant:
- Audio and video content are forbidden.
- JavaScript and executable file launches are forbidden.
- All fonts must be embedded and also must be legally embeddable for unlimited, universal rendering. This also applies to the so-called PostScript standard fonts such as Times or Helvetica.
- Colorspaces specified in a device-independent manner.
- Encryption is forbidden.
- Use of standards-based metadata is mandated.
- External content references are forbidden.
- LZW and JPEG2000 image compressions are forbidden in PDF/A-1,
but JPEG 2000 compression is allowed in PDF/A-2. - Transparent objects and layers (Optional Content Groups) are forbidden in PDF/A-1, but they are supported in PDF/A-2.
- Provisions for digital signatures in accordance with the PAdES (PDF Advanced Electronic Signatures) standard are supported in PDF/A-2.
- Embedded files are forbidden in PDF/A-1, but PDF/A-2 offers the possibility to embed PDF/A files, allowing archiving of sets of documents in a single file.
PDF/A Support in ABBYY Technology Products
PDF/A Export (PDF/A-1b & PDF/A-1a) is available in the following ABBYY technology products
FineReader Engines - OCR & Document Conversion
FlexiCapture Engine - Separation, Classification & Data Capture
Recognition Server - Solution for server based processing and document capture
FlexiCapture - Solutions for Data Capture
- FlexiCapture 9.0 - all versions
- FlexiCapture 8 Professional
About PDF/A-2 Support
The technical changes of PDF/A-2 are:
- based on based PDF 1.7 (ISO 32000-1)
- highly efficient JPEG2000 compression allowed
- support for transparency effects and layers
- embedding of OpenType fonts
- provisions for digital signatures in accordance with the
PAdES (PDF Advanced Electronic Signatures) standard. - possibility to embed PDF/A files in PDF/A-2,
allowing archiving of sets of documents as individual documents in a single file.
The most important feature for OCR-conversion is the usage of JPEG2000 compression to generate smaller output files.
ABBYY will add the PDF/A-2 export in future product releases.
The first product will be FineReader Engine 11 Windows, targeted for end of 2012. The update will be free for customers with a valid Software Maintenance contract.
… this is roadmap information - no announcement subject to change 
Stand: 03/2012
Further Information
ABBYY is a worldwide member in the PDF/A Competence Center and committed to support PDF/A
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