The PDF/A-1 formats specified in the ISO 19005-1 standard strive to provide a consistent and robust subset of PDF which can safely be archived over a long period of time, or used for reliable data exchange in enterprise and government environments. PDFlib 7 can be used to create PDF/A output conforming to ISO 19005-1.

PDF/A is targeted at reliable long-time preservation of digital documents. The standard is based on PDF 1.4, and imposes some restrictions regarding the use of color, fonts, annotations, and other elements. There are two flavors of PDF/A-1, both of which can be created and processed with PDFlib.

PDF/A-1b (formally ISO 19005-1 Level B) ensures that the visual appearance of a document is preservable over the long term. Simply put, PDF/A-1b ensures that the document will look the same when it is processed some time in the future.

PDF/A-1a (formally ISO 19005-1 Level A) is based on level B, but adds properties which are known from the »Tagged PDF« flavor: it adds structure information and reliable text semantics in order to preserve the document's logical structure and natural reading order. Simply put, PDF/A-1a not only ensures that the document will look the same when it is processed some time in the future, but also that its contents (semantics) can be reliably interpreted and will be accessible to physically impaired users.

Our PDF/A implementation is based on the ISO 19005-1 standard plus Technical Corrigendum 1 (ISO 19005-1:2005/Cor.1:2007(E))

The PDFlib 7 family supports creation of PDF/A-1a and PDF/A-1b. Support for PDF/A-1a is built on top of the features for creating Tagged PDF. For more information on PDF/A support in PDFlib 7 please read our whitepaper. The PDFlib Cookbook contains sample code for creating PDF/A output with PDFlib 7. Details of creating and processing PDF/A with PDFlib 7 are available in the PDFlib 7 Tutorial, which is included in all PDFlib packages.

PDFlib 7.0.3 is the first product worldwide to support XMP extension schemas for PDF/A-1.

Our PDF processing tool PLOP 3 is PDF/A-aware: if the input document conforms to the PDF/A standard, the output will either conform to PDF/A as well (for most operations), or the operation will be rejected if it would result in non-conforming PDF/A output (e.g. if encryption is requested, which is not allowed in PDF/A). If a particular operation, such as encryption, is more important to you than PDF/A conformance you can override PLOP's default behavior and instruct it to sacrifice PDF/A conformance in order to perform the desired operation. In this case PLOP will allow you to create encrypted PDF, but will remove any PDF/A conformance identifier from the document.

Digital signatures created by PLOP DS are PDF/A-aware as well: if the input conforms to the PDF/A standard, the signed PDF will also be PDF/A-conforming.

pCOS 2 (the stand-alone product as well as the pCOS interface integrated in all other products) offers a simple method for identifying PDF/A documents.

PDFlib GmbH does not currently offer any products for PDF/A validation, or for converting arbitrary PDF documents to conforming PDF/A.

A PDF/A validator is a tool which checks whether or not a document conforms to the PDF/A standard. With the Bavaria Report PDFlib GmbH conducted a comprehensive test of PDF/A validation tools. You can find the test results here.