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Institutions like banks, healthcare, and insurance companies carry a heavy backlog of archival information dating back months or years. This is to suggest that there’s a need for such organizations to store data discreetly and, at the same time, observe good file preservation practices.
The recommended way to achieve this is by generating PDF files that comply with the PDF/A standard—it’s the industry standard for corporate, legal, and government records.
Ideally, it is designed for long-term digital preservation. The goal is to ensure documents remain accessible and readable for many years regardless of the device or software being used.
But first of all, what is a PDF/A? Why do you need to observe best practices for creating PDF/A-compliant files?
This write-up offers detailed information on best practices for creating PDF/A-compliant files to ensure long-term document preservation, accessibility, and compliance. Read on!
A PDF/A refers to an ISO-standardized version of PDF (Portable Document Format) specialized for long-term preservation and archiving of electronic documents. The ‘A’ in PDF/A stands for archive.
It’s regarded as the industry standard because it guarantees consistent rendering across different systems, and unlike standard PDFs, it ensures that your documents remain accessible and readable for many years.
Well, storage materials degrade over time, and backups don’t always preserve files for long periods. Besides, files can become incompatible with new software, and data can become unintelligible when supported files go missing.
Another issue that can affect institutions dealing with sensitive data is the fact that files can be altered and damaged when opened with new software. PDF/A ensures there’s no modification of text in PDF documents.
The best practices discussed below are the minimum requirements you should observe when creating PDF/A-compliant files. They include:
Each variation of PDF/A is suited for different use cases. So, the moment you choose the right PDF/A standard, you’ll be on your way to fulfilling your organization’s purpose and regulatory requirements.
For instance, PDF/A-1 is ideal for simple, text-based documents, while PDF/A-2 is suitable for more complex documents requiring transparency, layers, or embedded PDFs.
PDF/A-3 is best for documents that require source files such as spreadsheets and XML. Lastly, PDF/A-4 is best for newer documents using modern PDF features.
With a PDF/A-compliant software, you are guaranteed that all the necessary components, including color profiles, images, and fonts, are embedded within the PDF file. The goal is to eliminate reliance on external resources.
To know if the solution you are about to buy is PDF/A-compliant, check if it has features that facilitate the saving or exporting of documents As PDF/A. This includes the “Save as PDF/A” option in the file menu.
Also, check for PDF/A validation tools because some solutions have built-in tools to validate PDF/A compliance. Lastly, you can review the software’s documentation to see if it supports PDF/A.
You want to make sure text appears the same way it was initially designed, regardless of the device it’s viewed on. That’s why you embed fonts, text, and images in PDFs.
In the event that you fail to embed fonts, the PDF reader will most likely substitute them with a completely different font. What comes next is the alteration of a document’s layout, design, and overall aesthetics of printed materials.
Some of the best PDF fonts include:
PDF/A doesn’t allow encryption. Encryption defies the purpose of PDF/A—which is the long-term archiving and digital preservation of documents.
If a file is encrypted, it means it’ll require a decryption key or password for accessibility, which may not be supported in future PDF readers.
The reason JavaScript is not permitted under PDF/A is that it introduces dynamic behavior — it can modify document content dynamically, resulting in inconsistent rendering over time. Moreover, future PDF readers may lack the capability to support JavaScript.
The LZW (Lempel-Ziv-Welch) algorithm is a lossless compression method. It’s designed to compress a file’s size without losing any data to preserve data integrity. However, it’s not permitted in PDF/A-compliant files because some file formats might not support it. For instance, LZW doesn’t work well with 16-bit ‘noisy’ data. 16-bit images contain a high range of color, particularly in scanned images with noise.
In this case, ‘noise’ refers to random variations in pixel values — it has fewer repetitive patterns.
And since LZW compression works by identifying repeated patterns, ‘noisy’ data makes compression inefficient.
XMP technology is the industry standard for creating, processing, and exchanging metadata in PDF/A files. In this context, metadata is basically the information describing a file, its properties, and its content.
So, XMP technology ensures that metadata is embedded directly within the PDF instead of storing it separately. It’s a structured and extensible way of storing metadata. It ensures the metadata travels with the file even if you move or share it.
The primary goal of PDF/A is to guarantee documents remain readable, accessible, and legally valid for decades to come. So, you must avoid non-compliant features such as JavaScript and encryption, as discussed above, because they can make your documents unsuitable for long-term archiving. It’s, therefore, advisable to choose a reliable SDK platform tool and make sure you test your PDF/A file before distribution to ensure it complies with all the necessary PDF/A standards.
