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The PDF Association celebrates its members’ public statements
of support
for ISO-standardized PDF technology.

Member Area

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!

National Archives tilts towards a paperless (and PDF) future

October 2017 by PDF Association staff
News


For NARA and (in principle) for all US Federal agencies, paper is officially going obsolete (for records-keeping) in 2022.

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September 2017 by PDF Association staff
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Federal agencies will advocate for cultural heritage communities in a vendor-neutral environment Berlin, Germany. The National Archives and the Library … Read more

News

August 2017 by PDF Association staff
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PDF/raster, a strict subset of the PDF format, was designed for storing, transporting and exchanging multi-page raster-image documents, especially scanned … Read more

News

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

Article

August 2017 by PDF Association staff
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The latest release of veraPDF, the industry-supported PDF/A validator, is now available for download.

News

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

Article

August 2017 by PDF Association staff
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The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has announced the publication of ISO 32000-2 (PDF 2.0), the latest version of the … Read more

News

July 2017 by PDF Association staff
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Replacing AIIM at the US TAG Administrator and secretary for ISO TC 171 SC 2, the 3D PDF Consortium, a … 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

Article

July 2017 by PDF Association staff
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The PDF Association, a not-for-profit organization designed to foster universal public standards for PDF technology, today announced the publication of … Read more

News

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

Article

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