Both PDF/UA and PDF/A got together as part of the ISO TC171 PDF committee meetings in Hamburg last week.

This was the first meeting of the PDF/UA (Universal Access) committee. Their scope is aimed at delivering a standard for PDF files that can be readily accessed by those with impaired vision or other disabilities.

As a first meeting, the first order of business was to select a convenor and a project lead. The secretariat for TC171 is AIIM, acting on behalf of ANSI, the American national standards body. Normal ISO practice is for the convenor and project lead to be from the same nation as the secretariat. Dennis Newman was appointed as convener, and Cherie Ekholm is now project lead.

We addressed all comments to the combined new work item/working draft ballot, including some interesting discussions as to whether it is necessary to ensure that a PDF/UA file can be formally validated as compliant. It seems clear that machine validation will not always be possible, as so many of the requirements are based on the intent of the content in ways that require a person to determine correctness. We agreed that it should be a goal that files & tools can be machine validated as much as possible, but that there’s no absolute requirement on machine validation. Human validation is sufficient to address the likely regulatory frameworks that may be built up around UA; machine validation would be a bonus.

The PDF/A committee (ISO TC171/SC2/WG5) met for two full days, and worked our way through 220+ comments on the last review draft of PDF/A-2 (ISO 19005-2). Fortunately a little over half of those were editorial or entirely non-controversial and could be disposed of very quickly.

Of the rest, the highlights were:

• Agreement that it’s very difficult to schema-validate XMP because different serialisations will result in failure to match. We discussed alternative methodologies, but it seems unlikely that those will bear fruit in the time-scale of PDF/A-2.
• PDF/A-1 allows the embedding of additional PDF/A-1 files within the main document. It had been suggested that we open up that restriction in PDF/A-2 to accommodate business needs for retention of machine readable (e.g. XML) data, original authoring formats (e.g. Excel documents) etc. After some debate it was agreed that this should be pushed out for consideration in PDF/A-3.

  As the UK representative to these discussions I’d be very interested to hear input on this point, especially from UK organizations, both as to the need for support in PDF/A-3 and if anyone feels a real urgency for enabling embedding of non-standardized files within a PDF/A-2 file.

A small number of the issues were too complex and too technically detailed to be fully resolved in the full committee; those were delegated to an ad hoc committee comprising Leonard Rosenthol, Olaf Drümmer and me.

The next draft will include decisions made in Hamburg and those from the ad hoc team and should be out as a CD ballot by the end of June. The results of that ballot will be reviewed in the next PDF/A meeting in October in Orlando, FL, USA.

Some of the comments to the last PDF/A-2 review were put alongside input from elsewhere, including from the PDF/A Competence Center and together they add up to a sufficiently long list that we agreed to start work on a second technical corrigendum for PDF/A-1. If we decide to complete that task it could be published at about the same time as PDF/A-2.

Finally, we started discussions on the intended goals and benefits for a future PDF/A-3 standard. I’m sure those discussions will continue for some time to come!

Global Graphics has been quietly working away on a successor to its very successful JAWS PDF range of desktop software, and today gDoc Fusion makes its debut to a select group prior to its full launch on May 18th.

Those who participated in the Global Graphics desktop software survey back in February and opted in to try out a new software application will shortly be receiving a personalised email, giving them an opportunity to obtain a fully working, pre-release version of this new, office productivity product.

Those who take the opportunity to download and install gDoc Fusion may well want to tell the world about their experiences, and to do so they can post comments to this blog.

You can read more about gDoc Fusion at www.globalgraphics.com/gdoc

I recently won an iPod. What struck me first was that I could use almost every feature straight away. OK, I had to read the instructions on the packaging to get it out, and somebody showed me how to turn it off, but other than those I didn’t need to do more with the manual than to notice I had one in the box.

What struck me next was that it does almost everything I want. Being a control freak I want to be able to delete tracks from the device itself, instead of having to remember to do so later in iTunes. I also don’t really like the way that iTunes assumes total ownership of my media, presumably because it assumes it can do a better job than I can. While those are pretty minor complaints they can be enough to significantly reduce the value of the device to me. The rest of the interface … well … just works. So it’s nearly wonderful, but falls a little short of what I would ideally want.

At the other end of the scale, I seem to spend more of my spare time than is probably healthy sitting in front of Photoshop. That should be regarded as a specialist tool, but it’s become the modern equivalent of alloy wheels and lowered suspension for artists and intellectuals. Because of the original target audience it’s designed to address the needs of specialists, and there are guaranteed to be at least four ways to achieve anything you want, often with subtly different results. There may be a few people who can honestly claim to have mastered all of Photoshop, just as there are a few people who are chess grand masters. Most of us stumble along with the aid of various idiots’ guides and learn as much by word of mouth as anything else. Even the manual will tell you only what all the knobs and buttons do, but not why you’d want them to, at least most of the time.

Adobe recognised that the popularity of digital photography meant that there had to be a simpler version of the same tool, so they launched Photoshop Elements. If you like it’s a sort of iPod version, which is much closer to everything just working. Of course that’s achieved by removing some of the options that the professional users need. Presumably they spent some time figuring out what features most people used most of the time to define the differentiation between Elements and the full product. Intriguingly various versions of Elements have even included functionality that is not (obviously) present in the concurrent ‘full’ product, presumably because there’s an assumption that an advanced user doesn’t (shouldn’t?) need something like red eye removal. And the functionality that is provided is presented in a much simpler and more intuitive way.

Now let’s turn the same way of thinking on PDF processing.

I’ll admit that I occasionally need to do all sorts of nasty things to PDF files; my job requires that I understand them well enough to know how they tick and to be able to perform drastic surgery without the aid of a safety net. I use that knowledge to guide standardisation efforts around PDF, for instance. On the other hand, I spend a lot of my time writing and editing reports and lots of other regular office & management work. When I’m in that mode I want a tool that’s clear and obvious and lets me achieve what I need with the minimum of effort. If I’m thinking about how to drive the applications on my computer then I’m not thinking about the stuff that really matters.

I have an occasional need to do minor editing on PDF files; things like rotating pages, or amalgamating multiple documents into one, so the free Adobe Reader doesn’t cut it for me. I might consider buying Adobe Acrobat Standard or Pro, but even Standard is heading towards the full Photoshop level of complexity (remember to read the manual, all ye who enter here). I’m faced with the choice between an iPod (nearly, but not quite, enough) and a Photoshop (way too much, thank you!)

All of this thinking crystallized for me when I saw the results of a study Global Graphics had commissioned. It seems I’m not alone. Many people now think of the ease of use of office “productivity” software as being roughly on a par with programming an old VHS video recorder. The magic solution for VHS recorders seemed to be to ask the nearest 8-year-old for help, but most of us don’t have that luxury when we’re at work. Not as “productive” as it should be, then.

Robert Browning said “less is more” and the cry has been repeated by many since, but the iPod shows that it is possible to go beyond simple to simplistic. The quote “as simple as possible, but no simpler” is attributed to Albert Einstein and seems to set a better target (appropriately enough the quote is probably an elegant simplification of what he actually wrote). Wouldn’t it be nice if somebody designed a set of tools that miss out all the bloat that I don’t want or need, but excels at the stuff that I do need to do? If it could also focus on making those things as easy as possible with an interface on it that I can understand without getting distracted from my day job …

… I think I’d put that on my birthday list. After all, I already have the iPod!