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New Application Note Illuminates PDF’s Flexible Options for Custom Metadata

October 2025 by PDF Association staff

The PDF Association has released a new Application Note titled “Including Custom Metadata Structures in PDF.”

This document addresses the need for organizations to use custom metadata beyond standard XMP schemas in their PDF workflows. It provides guidance on designing custom metadata schemas, embedding them interoperably, best practices for versioning and extensibility, and strategies for exposing metadata to applications and tools.

The document’s objective is to enhance interoperability and efficiency by allowing custom metadata to travel seamlessly within PDF documents, eliminating the need for separate “sidecar files.”

The Note is now available on the PDF Association website.

The PDF Association has released a new Application Note titled “Including Custom Metadata Structures in PDF.”

This document addresses the need for organizations to use custom metadata beyond standard XMP schemas in their PDF workflows. It provides guidance on designing custom metadata schemas, embedding them interoperably, best practices for versioning and extensibility, and strategies for exposing metadata to applications and tools.

The document’s objective is to enhance interoperability and efficiency by allowing custom metadata to travel seamlessly within PDF documents, eliminating the need for separate “sidecar files.”

The Note is now available on the PDF Association website.

Browsers battle over PDF capabilities

July 2025 by PDF Association staff
PDF in the Wild


Browsers battle over PDF capabilities | ISO’s “Publicly Available Standards” page is gone | PDF to Brainrot | JHOVE update supports PDF 2.0 | The US Library of Congress updates … Read more

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July 2025 by PDF Association staff
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This initial FAQ focuses on HDR in the PDF/A and PDF/X contexts, to help stakeholders understand how high dynamic range … Read more

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July 2025 by PDF Association staff
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The poster sessions are a great way to interact with each other at PDF Days Europe 2025!

PDF Association news

July 2025 by Duff Johnson
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Here’s what previous PDF Days attendees have told me about this event, and why attending is a good investment.

PDF Association news

July 2025 by Paul Rayius (Allyant)
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Experience since PDF/UA-1 was published has revealed that some rules were too prescriptive. In some situations the semantic significance of … Read more

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July 2025 by PDF Association staff
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This recently published report from ISO/IEC JTC 1 SC 34 presents an analysis of related standards, the current status and … Read more

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June 2025 by Patrick Gallot (Datalogics)
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PDF has long relied on Flate for general-purpose data compression. Today, Brotli has emerged as a promising new approach that … Read more

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June 2025 by PDF Association staff
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If you use a word processor creating Tagged PDF is your default. | FOGRA’s summary of developments in print | … Read more

PDF in the Wild

June 2025 by PDF Association staff
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Berlin ist calling! Are you ready for the big city?

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June 2025 by Patrick Gallot (Datalogics)
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This article explains the options in allowing, limiting, and/or preventing data scraping from occurring when AI and text data mining … Read more

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June 2025 by PDF Association staff
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This document provides essential guidance and recommendations for those aiming to create PDF files that adhere to multiple ISO-standardized subsets … Read more

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