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> Data Deposition Formats > PDF for archival preservation, 2011
PDF for archival preservation, 2011
suggest a fix or extension
Abbreviation: PDF/A-2
Identifiers:
Type Id
SIS ID fPDFA-2 Copy ID to clipboardSIS ID copied
LOCLibrary of Congress fdd000319
Media type(s):
File extension(s): .pdf
Format family: PDF/A
Functional domains:
  • Documentation
  • Textual Source Language Data
Recommendations:
Centre Domain Level Comments
ACDH-ARCHE DocumentationUnstructured documentation of the resource and its parts such as corpus or annotation guidelines. recommended
ORTOLANG DocumentationUnstructured documentation of the resource and its parts such as corpus or annotation guidelines. acceptable
ORTOLANG Textual Source Language DataWritten unstructured/plain text or originally structured text (e.g. HTML) without linguistic or other mark-up added for research purposes. acceptable
Sprakbanken DocumentationUnstructured documentation of the resource and its parts such as corpus or annotation guidelines. recommended
Description:

PDF/A-2 is a format created by subsetting the PDF 1.7 (ISO 32000-1) format, with the aim of prohibiting features unsuitable for long-term archiving, such as font linking (as opposed to font embedding) and encryption. PDF/A-1 files will not necessarily conform to PDF/A-2, and PDF/A-2 compliant files will not necessarily conform to PDF/A-1. PDF/A-2 offers the following new features over PDF/A-1:

  • JPEG 2000 image compression
  • support for transparency effects and layers
  • embedding of OpenType fonts
  • provisions for digital signatures in accordance with the PDF Advanced Electronic Signatures – PAdES standard
  • the option of embedding PDF/A files to facilitate archiving of sets of documents with a single file.

Other formats in the PDF/A family are as follows:

  • PDF/A-1: "Part 1: Use of PDF 1.4" (2005-09-28)
  • PDF/A-3: "Part 3: Use of ISO 32000-1 with support for embedded files" (2012-10-15)
  • PDF/A-4: "Part 4: Use of ISO 32000-2" (2020-11)

Centres should note that Part 1 references an obsolete version of PDF, while parts 2 and 3 reference the fully open PDF 1.7.

For more details, see a Wikipedia overview or consult the standards documents, where available.

VeraPDF is an open-source validator for PDF/A 1-3 formats.

Keywords: document format, binarized TextualData
Related Standard(s):
Relations
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Version ID: 9616381