PDF Week Online 2024 starts today!
All PDF Association Full and Liaison Members who have joined Technical and/or Liaison Working Groups are welcome for two weeks of extended-length TWG and LWG discussions to advance PDF!
The virtual PDF Week, one of 3 PDF Week events each year, kicks off today. Members of Technical and Liaison Working Groups are welcome, and should already have meeting invitations in their calendar! If for whatever reason you don’t have a meeting invitation and expected one, please contact Standards Director Betsy Fanning.
For 2024, PDF Week Online is actually spread over two weeks, from Monday, February 5 - Thursday February 15. Meeting-times are from 0800 ET / 1400 CET to 1300 ET / 1900 CET.
Here’s a rundown of PDF Week Online 2024 meetings.
Monday February 5 - PDF Imaging TWG
The Imaging Model TWG was established in 2023 to consider and decide on how to integrate modern imaging technologies in PDF, including HDR, as well as new image formats such as AVIF and JPEG-XL.
Tuesday February 6 - PDF TWG
The PDF TWG manages the core of PDF technology - the specification now published as ISO 32000. Among other subjects this TWG manages and resolves questions arising in the PDF Issues GitHub repo, where developers from around the world pose questions, concerns and requests for clarification.
Wednesday February 7 - Rich Media TWG, 3D PDF TWG, 3D PDF User LWG
These working groups consider the more interactive and dynamic features of PDF technology, and focus on both the RichMedia annotation type introduced with PDF 2.0 and the needs of manufacturing and engineering users of PDF. Among other subjects, this week’s meetings will address animated image formats and PDF for augmented reality.
Thursday February 8 - ISO TC 171 SC 2 WG 7, Digital Signature TWG, PDF Forms TWG
Following the WG 7 meeting (which focuses on 3D, the Digital Signature TWG will continue its work on reviewing, interpreting and clarifying the specifications, as well as discussing new feature requests. The PDF Forms TWG will continue the work of connecting PDF forms to “derivation to HTML” concepts, replacing JavaScript for common concepts (e.g., validation) and modernizing form data exchange.
Monday February 12 - PDF Accessibility LWG and LaTeX Project LWG
The PDF Accessibility LWG will take most of this day advancing the set of techniques under development for publication on pdfa.org while the LaTeX Project LWG will continue to address the challenge of publishing accessible technical content.
Tuesday February 13 - Deriving PDF from HTML TWG, PDF Reuse TWG, PDF/UA TWG
These three groups all focus on various aspects of Tagged PDF, the feature which enables reliable reuse and accessibility of PDF content. For the past several years the PDF Reuse and PDF/UA TWGs have collaborated on the development of a new specification for Tagged PDF - a major announcement is on the way!
Wednesday February 14 - PDF/UA Processor LWG, PDF Technology MWG, EA-PDF LWG
The PDF/UA Processor LWG is making outstanding progress on its examination of the various accessibility API role mappings for HTML elements and WAI-ARIA (and DPub) attributes with the objective of mapping these to their functional equivalents in PDF. The next step: consideration of a formal “PDF-AAM” akin to those developed within W3C for HTML, CSS and other web technologies to define how user agents map PDF features to platform accessibility application programming interfaces (APIs).
The PDF Technology MWG will continue its meetings for members’ marketing personnel to discuss challenges and messaging around PDF technology.
The EA-PDF LWG will continue advancing its draft specification for email archiving using PDF.
Thursday February 15 - DocRM LWG, IS TC 171 SC 2 WG 10, PDF/R TWG
In close conjunction with WG 10, the DocRM LWG will continue developing part 1 of its proposed standard reference model for the long-term preservation of text documents. To wrap up PDF Week the PDF/raster TWG will discuss proposed updates to the PDF/R standard.