The Portable Document Format (PDF), undeniably one of the most commonly used formats for electronic documents, is now accessible as an ISO International Standard – ISO 32000-1. This move follows a decision by Adobe Systems Incorporated, original developer and copyright owner of the format, to relinquish control to ISO, who is now in charge of publishing the specifications for the current version (1.7) and for updating and developing future versions.
“By releasing the full PDF specification for ISO standardization, we are reinforcing our commitment to openness”, says Kevin Lynch, Chief Technology Officer at Adobe, in the press release. “As governments and organizations increasingly request open formats, maintenance of the PDF specification by an external and participatory organization will help continue to drive innovation and expand the rich PDF ecosystem that has evolved over the past 15 years.”
PDF, a digital form used to represent electronic documents, allows users to exchange and view the documents easily and reliably, independent of the environments in which they are created, viewed and printed, while preserving their content and visual appearance.
With the explosive growth of the Internet, PDF has become one of the most common formats for document exchange, widely used in all professional and personal contexts. The format enables:
• preservation of document fidelity independent of device or platform
• merging of content from diverse sources
• collaborative editing of documents using multiple platforms
• digital signatures for authenticity
• security and permissions to preserve control over content
• accessibility of content to those with disabilities
• extraction and reuse of content for use with other file formats, and
• gathering data and integrating it with business systems using PDF forms.
Major corporations, government agencies and educational institutions use PDF to streamline their operations by replacing paper documentation with electronic exchange. Already, over 2 000 PDF product developers use this standard for their products and billons of PDF files are in existence today.
ISO Secretary-General Alan Bryden comments: “As an ISO standard, we can ensure that this useful and widely popular format is easily available to all interested stakeholders. The standard will benefit both software developers and users by encouraging the propagation and dissemination of a common technology that cuts across systems and is designed for long term survival.”
The new standard, ISO 32000-1, Document management – Portable document format – Part 1: PDF 1.7, is based on the PDF version 1.7 developed by Adobe. This International Standard supplies the essential information needed by developers of software that create PDF files (conforming writers), software that reads existing PDF files and interprets their contents for display and interaction (conforming readers), and PDF products that read and/or write PDF files for a variety of other purposes (conforming products).
Future versions of the format will be published as subsequent parts of the standard by the ISO subcommittee in charge of its maintenance and development (SC 2, Application issues, of ISO technical committee ISO/TC 171, Document management applications).
Source: ISO (International Organization for Standardization)
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Adam W.” for the heads up.]
Nice. Maybe a little fear of Silverlight after all?
I have never quite understood why it is that Macs play so well with PDF while on Windows Microsoft get sued by Adobe for trying to incorporate it..
Guess that is now history though.
I deal with a lot of OSS peeps who have crappy PDF readers that don’t support transparency (and because Reader is “commercial”, they can’t load it on their machines). This renders a lot of my artwork, especially that that uses cut-outs or drop shadows nearly illegible in their viewers.
Now that PDF is ISO standard maybe the crapware PDF viewers will now be distributed that will be able to view all of my art.
You little MAC crybabies just loooooovve your namby-pamby open standards, don’t you. I can hear you lemmings now: “oh look at me I use MAC and what’s great is it makes generous use of yet another independent and internationally sanctioned file format at the OS level”. Whatever.
Microsoft XPS is hot on the heels of the old PDF format an Microsoft doesn’t have to get permission to add features or make improvements. Why do what everybody else is doing when you can march to the beat of a true innovator like the geniuses in Redmond? I thought you MAC sheep thought different.
Your potential. Our passion.™
@Macaday
Perhaps because Microsoft has a history of “sharing” and “partnering” with other companies, when what they really intend to do is steal or co-opt the technology for their own benefit, then use an army of lawyers to prevent the original company from ever again laying claim to the technology they created.
For a lot more information on this, read through the articles on http://www.roughlydrafted.com
@ Lazy European
It has nothing to do with fear of Silverlight. It’s just that Adobe did it right — they didn’t “fast-track” the process in an attempt to shovel a bunch of crap down ISO’s throats, as did a certain standards-corrupting monopolistic software marketing company.
Adobe submitted PDF 1.7 to ISO in January, 2007. It took ISO about 18 months to approve it as a standard.
In slow but unequivocal ways, the MSFT hegemony is being disassembled.
Suck on that, DOCX dorks!
wow that sure was easy, no noise about this iso standard huh
Sniff…. poor MS and docx.
What will they do now?
The walls are crumbling and the kings have no clothes.
Think about Ballmer and the monkey boy dance…..ugh.
Apple licensed Adobe’s Display Postscript when they built MacOS X to allow the Mac to natively generate/display PDF files natively within the operating system. That’s why the Mac plays so well with PDF files, and also why the built-in Preview application actually displays PDF files faster than the free commercial Adobe Acrobat Reader. This MacOS X functionality also makes it easy for Leopard to use Quick Look to display PDF files with a simple right-click context menu option.
Did Microsoft attempt to PAY Adobe for a PDF/Display Postscript license to incorporate it into Windows, or did it attempt to steal it?
“By releasing the full PDF specification for ISO standardization, we are reinforcing our commitment to openness”
Sounds like Kevin was gritting his teeth when he said that.
You little PC crybabies just loooooovve your namby-pamby MICROSOFT standards, don’t you. I can hear you lemmings now: “oh look at me I use Windows and what’s great is it makes generous use of yet another closed and internationally exploited file format at the OS level”. Whatever.
Apple is hot on the heels of any new open format and Apple doesn’t have to get users screwed or developers locked into one companys problems to add features or make improvements. Why do what everybody else is doing when you can march to the beat of a true innovator like the geniuses in Cupertino? I thought you PC sheep thought FINALLY AWAKE FROM YOUR VIRUS INFECTED, MAL-WARE CRIPPLED, AND OS LIMITED COMPUTERS- BUT LEMMINGS ARE LEMMINGS.
Your potential. Our Pissing.™
I love it when people discover Zune Tang® for the first time and don’t get the sarcasm.
Part of the reason Adobe doesn’t get along with Microsoft is that it is still fuming over the TrueType episode — the partially successful effort by MS to get around Postscript with its own type rendering technology (Apple’s ill-advised participation in this scheme was one of many tragedies during the Jobs-less years).
I am not sure I understand the reference, in an earlier post, to this as a defensive move against Silverlight. What does PDF have to do with Sliverlight? A much more comparable technology is Adobe’s Flash, which has far more to fear from H.264 and Apple web innovations than it does from Silverlight.
Yes, obviously comparing Silverlight to PDF was someone losing their grasp on reality and comparing chalk with cheese. That said like Office I suppose in years to come it could develop into some lame form of chalky cheese that eats into part of its online market.
I think most people understand zuny’s contributions are attempts at sarcasm and irony, however I see no problem with micky taking what is after all a scarily true reflection of the pc clones actual thinking process. Unfortunately for us all, one doesn’t have to be especially clever to actually mimic their stupidity, which the rewrite of the lacklustre original showed up rather well I think.
Adobe sucks just a little less than M$. Their products are over priced and don’t work well.
Apple licensed Adobe’s Display Postscript when they built MacOS X to allow the Mac to natively generate/display PDF files natively within the operating system. That’s why the Mac plays so well with PDF files, and also why the built-in Preview application actually displays PDF files faster than the free commercial Adobe Acrobat Reader.
Nearly, but not quite: NeXTStep was based on Display Postcript, however – when there was whole pissing contest about licensing fees – Apple actually went down the PDF technology route for Quartz. So it could be argued that nearly every thing that’s 2D on a Mac is a PDF that changes several dozen times a second.
This MacOS X functionality also makes it easy for Leopard to use Quick Look to display PDF files with a simple right-click context menu option.
Of course, this bit is also true for any other document format where someone develops the QuickLook viewer plug-in for that particular document type.
can we have the normal Zune Tang back please?
Lazy sez: “Nice. Maybe a little fear of Silverlight after all?”
Uh, no. Wrong technology. Silverlight is supposed to be the Flash killer. (hahaha!)
More likely Adobe want in on the new document standards war, now between PDF, Open Document and that Office Open XML MS boondoggle.
Question: What exactly was supposed to be the point of having an international document standard if the standards committee can’t keep their legs closed, so to speak? What am I supposed to do with this three-headed baby? Which two should I lop off?
;-D
Maybe Zune Tang is doing the twist and we do not know it. I do not know what is up, but is kinda funny- a 360 degree sarcasm.
Just a thought.
@NCG598
Is that like the Jason Kidd quote, said when his team was doing very badly: “We’re going to turn this team around 360 degrees.”
OK Microsoft- now SCREW!
@oh no my shorts
YES, that is a 360 degree twist with that 180 degree roll that happens 50 percent of the time for 25 percent of the population who believe a 100 percent of the lies 75 percent of the time on the 360 degree roll with at pesky 180 degree twist.
Damn- 100 percent confused!!!!! What was that question again?
Whoever’s cloning Zune Tang®, THANK YOU!
Now THAT’S humorous.
Clone Me! Clone Me!
;-D