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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!

Forensic tools for PDF

June 2024 by PDF Association staff
PDF Association news


A new members-only resource supports forensic experts tasks with examination of PDF files.

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June 2024 by PDF Association staff
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What do “first class companies” do? Japanese media covers the PDF Association in Tokyo. Firefox adds experimental alt. text generation … Read more

PDF in the Wild

June 2024 by Peter Wyatt
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Peter Wyatt’s latest article focuses on improving the user experience for website visitors needing to access specific content in longer … Read more

Article

June 2024 by PDF Association staff
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Private data is everywhere is in almost every broadly-adopted file format. This Application Note answers questions about private data in … Read more

PDF Association news

May 2024 by PDF Association staff
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Microsoft deepens its investment in Tagged PDF. We talked PDF with NISO. Both Android and iOS improve PDF handling. A … Read more

PDF in the Wild

May 2024 by PDF Association staff
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While PDF/X establishes rules for representing page content for print purposes, it doesn’t describe the specific requirements of the finished … Read more

PDF Association news

May 2024 by Peter Wyatt
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LOGIN REQUIRED: These synthetic files are intended for user experience and human-computer interaction (HCI) specialists to assess the behavior of … Read more

Article, For members only

May 2024 by PDF Association staff
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The latest ISO Extension to PDF 2.0 offers backwards-compatible integrity protection via Message Authentication Code (MAC).

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May 2024 by Peter Wyatt
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Accurately understanding the kinds of data that can be in a PDF and how it is stored can be very … Read more

Article

May 2024 by PDF Association staff
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The second PDF Week event of 2024 arrives May 6-10 in Tokyo! Members can attend remotely if they cannot join … Read more

PDF Association news

April 2024 by PDF Association staff
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Hugging Face.AI examines PDF. New PDF support in Android. Google reinvents a 31 year-old PDF feature. FireFox wants you to … Read more

PDF in the Wild

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