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The PDF Association celebrates its members’ public statements
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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!

Bottom-up: how standards should be made

April 2021 by Duff Johnson
Article


Standards development works best when the expert community is open to diverse and dissenting views. The door is already open to the government to listen, participate and propose. If it … Read more

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April 2021 by Peter Wyatt
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This PDF file tests parsing valid combinations of adjacent PDF tokens both in the body of a PDF as well … Read more

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March 2021 by Thomas Zellmann
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Thomas Zellmann, evangelist from the PDF Association, explains why PDF is not only “digital paper” but also one of the … Read more

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February 2021 by Dietrich von Seggern (callas software GmbH)
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The ISO-standardized PDF format and subset formats facilitate digital document solutions for today and tomorrow.

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February 2021 by PDF Association staff
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EA-PDF establishes high-level requirements for using PDF technology to package email for long-term preservation.

Article

February 2021 by Michael Karbe (Actino Software GmbH)
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As the AstraZeneca vaccine contract debacle makes clear, redacting PDF involves more than just the page; other objects have to … Read more

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January 2021 by Duff Johnson
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PDF/A-4 is essential to losslessly archiving PDF files that use current-generation PDF 2.0 technology… even including scanned documents. From modern … Read more

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January 2021 by Carsten Luedtge (Compart GmbH)
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How do companies stay agile enough in their document and output management to meet increasing customer expectations for speed and … Read more

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December 2020 by PDF Association staff
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27 years after Adobe shipped the first PDF viewer the portable document format has replaced paper as the final format … Read more

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November 2020 by Peter Wyatt
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The original PDF Issue Tracker corpus generated a lot of interest from the PDF technical community; now version 2 of … Read more

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October 2020 by Duff Johnson
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Introduction Akin to our earlier series on the Mueller Report PDF, this article provides cultural framing and technical background for … Read more

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