Adobe to release PDF for industry standardisation

“[Last week’s] announcement is the next logical step in the evolution of PDF from de facto standard to a formal, de jure standard,” says Kevin Lynch, senior vice president and chief software architect at Adobe.

Commitment to openness

“By releasing the full PDF specification for ISO standardisation, we are reinforcing our commitment to openness. As governments and organisations increasingly request open formats, maintenance of the PDF specification by an external and participatory organisation will help continue to drive innovation and expand the rich PDF ecosystem that has evolved over the past 15 years.”

PDF has become a de facto global standard for more secure and dependable information exchange since Adobe published the complete PDF specification in 1993. Both government and private industry have come to rely on PDF for the volumes of electronic records that need to be more securely and reliably shared, managed, and in some cases preserved for generations.

Specialised subsets

Since 1995, Adobe has participated in various working groups that develop technical specifications for publication by ISO and worked within the ISO process to deliver specialised subsets of PDF as standards for specific industries and functions. Today, PDF for Archive (PDF/A) and PDF for Exchange (PDF/X) are ISO standards, and PDF for Engineering (PDF/E) and PDF for Universal Access (PDF/UA) are proposed standards.

Additionally, PDF for Healthcare (PDF/H) is an AIIM proposed Best Practice Guide. AIIM serves as the administrator for PDF/A, PDF/E, PDF/UA and PDF/H.

Adobe will release the full PDF 1.7 specification as defined in the PDF Reference Manual available at www.adobe.com/devnet/pdf/pdf_reference.html to AIIM for the purpose of submission to ISO. The joint committee formed under AIIM will identify issues to be addressed, as well as proposed solutions, and will develop a draft document that will then be presented to a Joint Working Group of ISO for development and approval as an International Standard.

AIIM holds the secretariat for the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) Technical Committee (TC) 171 (http://www.iso.org/iso/en/stdsdevelopment/tc/tclist/TechnicalCommitteeDetailPage.TechnicalCommitteeDetail?COMMID=4053) and 171 SC2 for Document Management Applications, and is the administrator for the U.S. Technical Advisory Group to ISO TC 171 (http://www.aiim.org/standards.asp?ID=24828) that represents the US at international meetings.

Pleased with proposal

“As the administrator for several specialised ISO standard subsets of PDF, AIIM is pleased to receive this proposal from Adobe,” says John Mancini, president, AIIM.

“Over the last several years we have seen and in many cases helped facilitate a range of ongoing market and customer focused efforts around PDF. These efforts have grown so broadly that it now makes sense for Adobe to let the full specification serve as a unifying umbrella and submit it for approval under the formal ISO standards process.”