Question
Does FineReader Engine 12 support PDF/A export mode?
Answer
PDF/A is a file format according to the ISO standard for the long-term archiving of electronic documents. It is a 'subset of PDF' that excludes PDF features which are not suited to long-term archiving.
There are different levels of PDF/A:
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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 new standard
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-3
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The standard was published in October 2012 and differs from PDF/A-2 in a way that it allows to embed all kinds of file formats. For example: XML, Office formats, raw binary data, etc
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Important: the long-term compatibility will only be guaranteed for the PDF-part of the collection. If an organization will embed other file formats, then there are reasons/benefits to have access to the other file formats and accepting the risk that they are not usable in 100 years.
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PDF/A Minimum Requirements
Conditions for PDF/A compliancy:
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Audio and video content are forbidden.
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JavaScript and executable file launches are forbidden.
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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.
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Colorspaces specified in a device-independent manner.
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Encryption is forbidden.
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Use of standards-based metadata is mandated.
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External content references are forbidden.
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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.
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Provisions for digital signatures in accordance with the PAdES (PDF Advanced Electronic Signatures) standard are supported in PDF/A-2.
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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 Export (PDF/A-1b & PDF/A-1a) is available in the FineReader Engine 12.
PDF/A-2 Support
In addition to the common PDF and PDF/A-1 formats, FineReader Engine 12 now experts to PDF/a-2. The new options of the ISO standard format are:
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Support of JPEG2000 compression to generate smaller files
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A-2a – tagged & Unicode PDF/A-2
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A-2u – not-tagged PDF/A-2 with an ability to extract text in Unicode.
PDF/A-2 enables creation of smaller PDF files using JPEG2000 compression. For long-term archiving, this can help reduce used storage space and enable faster access when working on low bandwidth networks.
The general technical changes of PDF/A-2 are:
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based on based PDF 1.7 (ISO 32000-1)
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highly efficient JPEG2000 compression allowed
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support for transparency effects and layers
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embedding of OpenType fonts
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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.
PDF/A-3 Support
PDF/A-3 is an extension of the A-2 standard which allows inclusion of PDF/A files or files in a variety of other binary formats such as XML or Office formats. Long-term archiving and readability of the PDF/A part is still guaranteed, and the binary attachments can deliver additional benefits.
The PDF/A-3 extended container capabilities will make this format attractive in new areas, for example when a graphical representation of a document should be combined with some source data. The new e-invoice format defined by the Forum for Electronic Invoices Germany (FeRD) is based on PDF/A-3 and XML.
Since Release 3 of FineReader Engine 11 the API is extended, so that included files/attachments can be extracted and also be added to a PDF.
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