Revision of PDF 2.0: All about PDF/A-4

PDF 2.0

For 25 years, the platform-independent PDF (Portable Document Format) has been used and continuously refined.

Recent challenges have led many companies to focus even more on digital workflows. PDF is used in many scenarios, for example when sending and archiving digital documents, in remote work and schooling, in communication with public authorities, and in electronic invoicing.

Publication of the revision of PDF 2.0​

Over the years, the format has evolved through multiple versions. In 2017, PDF 2.0 introduced a new ISO standard with new features and detailed improvements. PDF standards are regularly updated to reflect technical progress and to provide a stable basis for future PDF applications.

At the end of 2020, a second edition of PDF 2.0 was released with corrections. This edition lays the foundation for the new standards PDF/A-4, PDF/X-6, PDF/VT-3, and PDF/R-1. More details are available here: All about the new PDF standards.

Since December 2020, the current PDF 2.0 specification is available as the 2nd edition. The newly published version (ISO 32000-2:2020) replaces the 2017 edition (ISO 32000-2:2017). PDF 2.0 had already covered key topics such as e-invoicing requirements for public authorities and the EU e-invoicing directive.

With this 2020 version, PDF/A-4 (sometimes also referred to as PDF/A-NEXT) was released (ISO 19005-4:2020).

Changes related to PDF/A-4 - benefits for long-term archiving with PDF​

  • The handling of electronic signatures according to the PAdES specification has been revised.
  • For developers of PDF/A-compliant solutions, metadata handling and embedded font handling have been simplified.
  • The specification provides an archiving path for PDF 2.0 files without losing PDF 2.0 features (for example page-based output intents), and JavaScript form fields are supported.
  • Instead of the previous compliance levels a/b/u, new compliance levels PDF/A-4f and PDF/A-4e have been introduced.

Changes in compliance levels​

As the successor to PDF/A-3, compliance level PDF/A-4f has been added. It allows embedding arbitrary files, which is especially relevant for electronic invoices and the ZUGFeRD data model.

In addition, PDF/A-4e was introduced for engineering use cases, enabling interactive viewing and archiving of technical drawings.

Further information​