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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!

PDF Association technical resources: an overview

November 2017 by PDF Association staff
Article, PDF Association news


PDF is PDF because files produced with one vendor’s software can be read using a different vendor’s software with no loss of fidelity. Interoperability is key to our industry. The … Read more

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October 2017 by PDF Association staff
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NARA (The National Archives and Records Administration) is the final depository for the long-term records generated by all other agencies … Read more

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August 2017 by Duff Johnson
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The Portable Document Format is perhaps the most common example of a de facto standard, so much so that Wikipedia … Read more

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August 2017 by Matt Kuznicki
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The PDF Association is proud to present the first PDF 2.0 example files made available to the public. Created and … Read more

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July 2017 by PDF Association staff
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The Portable Document Format (commonly known as “PDF”) is a file format developed in the early 1990s as a way … Read more

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July 2017 by PDF 2.0 interops help vendors

The PDF 2.0 interop workshops included many vendors with products for creating, editing and processing PDF files. They came together … Read more

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June 2017 by PDF Association staff
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2017 marks a record number of attendees / Experts shared fully-grounded wisdom on PDF standards across the two-day event Berlin. … Read more

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May 2017 by Andrew Bailes-Collins
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by Andrew Bailes-Collins Where do all these different flavors of PDF/X fit, and for anybody wanting to use PDF/X, which … Read more

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May 2017 by Andrew Bailes-Collins
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by Andrew Bailes-Collins PDF/X Tools The good news for anybody wishing to start working with PDF/X standards, is that there … Read more

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May 2017 by Stephan Jaeggi
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by Stephan Jaeggi PDF/X only defines the general requirements for a reliable exchange of prepress data; the ISO standard itself … Read more

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May 2017 by Dietrich von Seggern
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by Dietrich von Seggern Specialized ISO standards based on the Portable Document Format are available for a wide range of … Read more

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