Two founders reflect on the PDF Association’s earliest days

Twenty years ago, a small group of software companies shared a common goal: to ensure the adoption of the newly published ISO 19005 (PDF/A) standard for long-term document preservation.

What began in 2006 as the PDF/A Competence Centre has since grown into today’s PDF Association – an international community of software developers, end users, standards experts, researchers, and organizations dedicated to advancing the open ISO-standardized PDF ecosystem.

Over the past two decades, the PDF Association has played an important role in promoting PDF technologies through technical collaboration, education, interoperability initiatives, conferences, and contributions to international standardization. In 2011 the organization expanded its mission to support the broader family of PDF standards, including accessibility, engineering, printing, forms, and digital signatures, while fostering cooperation across the global PDF industry.

To mark the PDF Association’s 20th anniversary, two of the founding members reflected on the organization’s earliest days. Their personal recollections offer a unique perspective on how a simple idea evolved into a thriving international association, and how the first Technical Working Group laid the foundation for many of the jointly-developed technical resources, and other collaborative efforts that characterize the PDF community today.

Hans Bärfuß, founder of PDF Tools, shares a story about the founding of the PDF/A Competence Center itself, recalling how an idea first discussed at an exhibition in Zurich quickly gained support from across the industry.

Thomas Merz, founder of PDFlib, looks back on the formation of the first Technical Working Group, describing the work that helped clarify the practical implementation of PDF/A, led to the publication of the Association’s first Technical Notes, and resulted in the creation of the Isartor Test Suite.

Hans Bärfuß – The Beginnings of the PDF Association

Everything started with PDF/A. Thomas Zellmann had the idea to create a competence center for PDF/A. He spoke with me about this idea during an exhibition in Zurich. At that time, I was also searching for a quality label that would be accepted and respected by the industry for our own products.

In my view, PDF/A was exactly the right solution. That is why I immediately decided to support the initiative and become involved from the beginning.

The idea spread quickly. Many people and companies became interested in the project. After about half a year, the association was officially founded together with the new founding members who had joined during this period.

After the foundation of the organization, a lot of work was waiting for us. We prepared presentations to promote PDF/A and explain its importance to the industry. We also organized the first PDF Days, where experts and companies could meet, exchange ideas, and learn more about the new standard. In addition, we worked on technical notes that supported and complemented the PDF/A standard.

The organization received a very positive response from the industry. One important reason was the close connection with ISO, which gave the PDF/A Competence Center strong credibility. Later, important companies such as Adobe also joined as members. This had a very positive effect on the reputation and visibility of the organization.

Over the years, the organization continued to grow strongly. It developed into the PDF Association and became an international organization with an international board. Today, many representatives from member companies contribute valuable work and support the further development of the association.

Looking back, we can all be proud of what we have created together. What started as a simple idea grew into a respected international organization that continues to support and improve the world of PDF technology.

Thomas Merz – A Look Back at the Early Days of the Technical Working Group

The predecessor to the PDF Association, the PDF/A Competence Center, was founded in Berlin in 2006 by a group of small software companies from Germany and Switzerland (more specifically, the PDF/A CC was an initiative of the Association for Digital Document Standards e. V.). A bit of trivia: Under German law, seven founding members are required to establish a registered association; however, only five executives had come together. Since two of the individuals involved were each running two companies, they signed the founding document twice as a pragmatic solution to reach the required minimum of seven founding companies for entry in the register of associations.

The association grew rapidly and quickly attracted dozens of companies both domestically and abroad as members. It facilitated close internal collaboration among the companies and launched external initiatives such as seminars, conferences, and web-based resources to promote global and cross-industry acceptance of the ISO 19005-1 standard for PDF/A, published in 2005, and, starting in 2011 under the name PDF Association, the general implementation and distribution of PDF. While the association has many successful marketing activities to its credit, I would like to look back here on the beginnings of its technical work.

In the years following the organization’s founding, as head of the Technical Working Group (TWG), I was able to help bring the formal requirements of PDF/A-1 to life and close technical gaps in the standard. To do this, we had to develop a common interpretation of complex issues within PDF and PDF/A that were not fully described in the relevant standards and specifications. The areas of color and metadata, in particular, raised many questions. The productive collaboration and spirit of that time are evident, among other things, in the fact that in 2008 alone we published half a dozen Technical Notes on PDF/A-1, which remain valid to this day and are still available. Building on this basis, the TWG also developed the still-available Isartor test suite for PDF/A-1b in 2008 as a reference for manufacturers of PDF creation and validation software. The Isartor suite (named after the location of the first TWG meeting in Munich, Germany) has served as a template for similar test suites, even outside the association.

Over the following years, the PDF Association continued to expand its technical work and took it to the next level through closer collaboration and, later, direct involvement in ISO standardization, thereby further solidifying PDF as a document format.