As a UK representative for PDF standards, I’ve just returned from the first of two week-long annual meetings called informally PDF ISO Week.
The meeting is attended by a select group of individuals from around the world, including representatives from Adobe, who come together to form an ISO committee that contributes to the evolution of PDF standards including PDF, PDF/E, PDF/A, PDF/UA, ECMAScript, ECMAScript 3D and PRC standards, with particular attention to the eagerly awaited release of PDF 2.0.
This recent event was kindly hosted by iTEXT, a company who are a real success story in the world of PDF technologies. The meeting was held in the historic city of Ghent in Belgium.
After being spoilt with a tour of this beautiful city, the committee sat down for a week of discussions surrounding an increasingly weighty document on the varying standards within the PDF format. The revisions are now in the final stretch and we will be able to reveal more later in the year.
For now, we were primarily concerned with PDF 2.0 and updating PDF/E, PDF/A and PDF/UA to reflect PDF 2.0 changes.
PDF/E covers the engineering standards of PDF, namely the preservation of engineering data. PDF/A covers archiving standards, and PDF/UA covers accessibility standards.
As of last year, a 3D PDF facility is available in Adobe’s Photoshop and we’re pleased to see that 3D as a whole is now well covered throughout the various standards.
As commercial developers of 3D PDF converter software for engineers and scientists, we’re encouraged to see that 3D technology is moving forward at a pace – and that 3D is also being well considered in the discussions surrounding archiving and accessibility too.
In particular, following this interesting and fruitful event, we’re keen to see the PDF/E 2.0 standard become the go-to platform to support 3D PDF with rich interactivity for the future.
A huge effort by many dedicated professionals around the world is contributing to these standards – it will be interesting to see what happens in the world of 3D when PDF 2.0 is officially published.
We’ll keep you posted.
