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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!

Announcing OctoberPDFest Online!

May 2020 by PDF Association staff
PDF Association news


This October 2020 free webinar series celebrates the diversity of PDF technology capabilities and solutions. If you work with PDF technology, or use it professionally know that in the 10th … Read more

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May 2020 by PDF Association staff
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The latest release of the industry-supported PDF/A validator has been released. An open source project developed by the Open Preservation … Read more

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May 2020 by PDF Association staff
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The PDF Association and the 3D PDF Consortium have partnered to develop a high-level introduction to the role and capabilities … Read more

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May 2020 by PDF Association staff
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The objective of the draft report on archiving email with PDF is to describe how advanced PDF-based capture, preservation, rendering, … Read more

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April 2020 by PDF Association staff
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The PDF Association is now accredited by ANSI to serve as the ANSI-accredited U.S, Technical Advisory Group (TAG) Administrator for … Read more

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April 2020 by Peter Wyatt
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Although less than a year into the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)-funded Safe Documents (SafeDocs) fundamental research program, from … Read more

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March 2020 by Duff Johnson
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A new resource collating all ISO groups and currently active work items related to PDF has been developed. Based on … Read more

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March 2020 by Dietrich von Seggern (callas software GmbH)
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More and more, magazines are available on tablets or other mobile platforms. The subscriber uses the respective app to view … Read more

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March 2020 by Peter Wyatt
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Now available from ISO: the Draft International Standard (DIS) version of the latest ISO 32000-2 (PDF 2.0) standard is ready … Read more

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March 2020 by Peter Wyatt
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Ailing economies around the world need every advantage in these difficult times. On the other side of today’s crisis a … Read more

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March 2020 by PDF Association staff
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As much as we were looking forward to PDF Days Europe 2020, including celebrating with our colleagues and friends, the … Read more

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