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What is PDF/A?
PDF/A is an International Standards Organization (ISO) standard for long-term preservation of electronic documents.
PDF/A offers assurance that documents archived in that format will maintain their appearance and readability regardless of which applications and systems were used to create them.
The PDF/A standard does not define an archiving strategy, but instead identifies a format for electronic documents that ensures they can be reproduced consistently and predictably in the exact same way well into the future. PDF/A offers users a way to preserve electronic documents in a manner that maintains their visual appearance over time, independent of the tools and systems used for creating, storing or rendering the files.
Based on portable document format (PDF) technology from Adobe Systems Inc., PDF/A eliminates PDF features not suited to long-term archival, such as audio, video and transparency. A vital component to PDF/A reproducibility is that the documents must be 100 percent self-contained. This feature ensures that all information needed to display the document in the same manner every time is embedded in the file. Included in each PDF/A file is all content, including text, raster images and vector graphics; as well as fonts and color information.
