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The PDF Association celebrates its members’ public statements
of support
for ISO-standardized PDF technology.

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Twenty Years of Trust: Celebrating the 20th Anniversary of PDF/A-1

November 2025 by PDF Association staff

This month the PDF industry is celebrating the 20th anniversary of PDF/A-1 (ISO 19005-1:2005), the publication of which revolutionized digital preservation.

Before this standard, archiving suffered from dependency issues. PDF/A-1, based on a constrained subset of PDF 1.4, mandated self-contained, device-independent documents. These rules ensure that a PDF/A document’s appearance can be reliably maintained over centuries, regardless of viewing software.

Rapidly adopted globally, the principles established in PDF/A-1 persist in later standards like PDF/A-4, which is based on PDF 2.0, the latest ISO standard for PDF.

Happy 20th, PDF/A! We (ok, not us personally) fully expect to be celebrating your 200th anniversary in November 2225!

This month the PDF industry is celebrating the 20th anniversary of PDF/A-1 (ISO 19005-1:2005), the publication of which revolutionized digital preservation.

Before this standard, archiving suffered from dependency issues. PDF/A-1, based on a constrained subset of PDF 1.4, mandated self-contained, device-independent documents. These rules ensure that a PDF/A document’s appearance can be reliably maintained over centuries, regardless of viewing software.

Rapidly adopted globally, the principles established in PDF/A-1 persist in later standards like PDF/A-4, which is based on PDF 2.0, the latest ISO standard for PDF.

Happy 20th, PDF/A! We (ok, not us personally) fully expect to be celebrating your 200th anniversary in November 2225!

A day to think about the PDF standard…

October 2021 by Dietrich von Seggern (callas software GmbH)
Article


callas software’s Dietrich von Seggern describes what “owned by ISO” really means, and why that matters, in celebration of World Standards Day.

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September 2021 by Dietrich von Seggern (callas software GmbH)
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Dietrich von Seggern from callas software explains PDF standards with a focus on the newest standards.

Article

September 2021 by Duff Johnson
Duff Johnson
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According to CommonCrawl’s detected MIME type PDF is the 3rd most popular file-format on the web (behind HTML and XHTML); … Read more

Article

August 2021 by Dietrich von Seggern (callas software GmbH)
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Dietrich von Seggern describes optimal uses of automation in label printing and discusses the integration of print processing steps in … Read more

Article

July 2021 by Leonard Rosenthol (Adobe)
Leonard Rosenthol
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The Technical Working Group’s chair explains the current missions of the PDF Forms TWG; a declarative model for business logic, … Read more

Article

July 2021 by Peter Shikli (Access2online Inc.)
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PDF documents can be as accessible as web pages if presented correctly.

Article

July 2021 by Peter Wyatt
Peter Wyatt
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To assist both academic and industry researchers achieve high-quality and accurate PDF-oriented research outcomes, the PDF Association is now offering … Read more

Article

June 2021 by Peter Wyatt
Peter Wyatt
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Doing PDF right means being aware of errata for PDF 2.0. With over 65 issues now resolved and approved by … Read more

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May 2021 by Peter Wyatt
Peter Wyatt
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The PDF Association expands its pdf-issues GitHub repo to cover all ISO standards based on PDF 2.0.

Article

May 2021 by Peter Wyatt
Peter Wyatt
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The LangSec IEEE S&P Workshop this year includes several PDF-related presentations resulting from SafeDocs research including a paper by CTO … Read more

Article

May 2021 by PDF Association staff
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An overview of industry working-group activities pertaining to tagged PDF.

Article

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