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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!

The U.S. Government’s Transition to All-Digital Government

October 2023 by National Archives and Records Administration
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New federal regulations set digitization standards for permanent records and require agencies to manage their permanent records in digital format.

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October 2023 by PDF Association staff
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PDF Week Fall 2023 in San Francisco covered subjects ranging from HDR to compression, color fonts, animation, accessibility and (much!) … Read more

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October 2023 by PDF Association staff
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The PDF Association is perhaps DARPA’s smallest-ever prime contractor. For DARPA’s SafeDocs program, however, it’s also the biggest success story.

PDF in the Wild

September 2023 by Thomas Zellmann
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To encourage marketing staff to sign up for the PDF Technology Marketing Working Group we decided to record a recent … Read more

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September 2023 by PDF Association staff
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PDF Week in San Francisco this October is hosting a free industry Symposium on Advancing the PDF Imaging Model! There’s … Read more

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September 2023 by Apryse
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Read Riley Kooh’s vision for the future of PDF technology over the next 25 years.

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September 2023 by Peter Wyatt
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PDF developers everywhere have a new resource; targeted test cases highlighting differences between implementations.

PDF Association news

September 2023 by PDF Association staff
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Funky (but legit!) PDF, sneaky malware PDF, poisoned PDF, PDF for LEGO, NASA does PDF… it’s a wild PDF world … Read more

PDF in the Wild

August 2023 by Peter Wyatt
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The PDF Association’s PDF cheat sheets are designed to help developers work more efficiently. They are highly condensed summaries, with … Read more

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August 2023 by Duff Johnson
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The PDF industry mourns the passing of the Adobe founder and visionary whose inventions and insights led to the creation … Read more

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August 2023 by Peter Wyatt
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PDF is a large, complex specification! Developers often look for first steps in its implementation. This article offers some suggestions.

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