Current developments at the PDF Association 2021
After the most important PDF event of the year, the Online PDF Days 2021, successfully concluded with 38 webinars and more than 2,000 registered participants, we want to give a short overview of upcoming developments at the PDF Association.
The PDF Association, based in Berlin, is an international organization of member companies and individuals. Its goals are to advance PDF technology and support collaboration across the ecosystem. Founded in 2006 as the PDF/A Competence Center, it expanded in 2011 to cover all PDF-related topics.
Members include companies, non-profit organizations, government agencies, and consultants from more than 20 countries. Through working groups, events, and technical initiatives, the association supports both PDF developers and organizations that use PDF in document and enterprise content management.
Key current developments at the PDF Association
- 3D technology in PDF
- Email archiving with PDF
- Securing PDF
- Issues in PDF standards
- New features for member services
3D technology in PDF
Advancing 3D technology is important for members in sectors such as AEC, aerospace, and automotive. The PDF Association published a detailed article on 3D PDF in September.
3D PDF is often used for plan and design data. It becomes especially valuable when this data can be distributed and archived for team use, even without the original CAD file. The PDF Association is currently promoting standardized 3D technologies in the PDF context, including broader STEP support in PDF. A STEP file is a 3D model in STEP format, the ISO standard for product data exchange.
More about working with 3D content in Acrobat:
https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/displaying-3d-models-pdfs.html
Email archiving with PDF
A notable collaboration with the University of Illinois has started to define a technical specification for email archiving with PDF.
More on email archiving with PDF:
Securing PDF
Peter Wyatt, CTO of the PDF Association and contributor to DARPA SafeDocs, spent much of 2021 improving the Arlington PDF Model, a machine-readable model derived from the PDF 2.0 specification.
The model is freely available on GitHub:
https://github.com/pdf-association/arlington-pdf-model
Issues in PDF standards
Peter Wyatt also maintains the pdf-issues repository. It is the central place for developers to report questions and issues in PDF specifications around PDF 2.0.
All developers, not only PDF Association members, are encouraged to contribute. Issues are reviewed by the PDF Technical Working Group, and resolved items have significantly improved interoperability and reliability across the PDF ecosystem.
New features for member services
The PDF Association recently updated its Feature Support pages so members can better showcase support for ISO standards through product profiles on pdfa.org. A new call-to-action element on each page also helps members direct traffic to their own products, services, and thought leadership content.
Outlook for 2022
Planning has started for the first live PDF technology event in Q3 2022. Additional projects are in preparation, including new standards, resources, and technologies.
A practical tip: monitor the ISO status page to follow the next steps in PDF-related standards work:
https://www.pdfa.org/iso-status
This page also includes results from ISO committee meetings responsible for specifications around PDF, PDF/A, PDF/UA, PDF/R, ECMAScript for PDF, and related standards.