PDF 1.7 Closer to Standardisation
PDF 1.7 Closer to Standardisation e
December 5, 2007: PDF creator Jim King says the majority of voters in a ballot for approval of PDF 1.7 to become the ISO 32000 Standard, have voted in favour of the move.
Required to have at least two thirds of the vote to be eligible for approval, the vote revealed 13 countries returned a positive result, while France ignored popular opinion to vote against and Russia abstained from the poll all together.
The International working group for ISO 32000 will meet on January 21-23 2008 where the group can address outstanding comments and potentially publish a revised document. As five countries included a range of comments in their ballots, these will need to be resolved before finalising the standard.
According to a posting on King’s blog, even Adobe representatives have found mistakes in the standard which they believe must be corrected. “To me this reflects the honesty with which this group has approached this whole effort. We could have held back to reduce the number but that is not the way this whole effort has been conducted and we are not about to start with trickery.”
Adobe released the full PDF 1.7 specification to the International Organisation for Standardisation via the Enterprise Content Management Association (AIIM) in a bid to evolve PDF into a full open standard.
The complete PDF specification has been published for use without restriction since 1993 and is already somewhat known as a de facto standard. The goal is push for PDF to be used as a primary source for storing electronic records so as they can be easily accessed, shared, managed and where necessary preserved for generations.