PDF 2.0 is on its way

Martin Bailey at 17:02 GMT on 21 December 2009

Around the end of every year it’s traditional to spend a while planning for and speculating about the changes that the next year or so will bring. I thought it might be useful to set out some of the plans for ISO 32000, otherwise known as the PDF International Standard.

ISO 32000-1 (part 1) was published in 2008, and defines PDF 1.7. Since then ISO 32000-2 has been in development, and is planned to define PDF 2.0.

The changes proposed to date come from a variety of sources, including:

  • requests for improvement of the text of 32000-1 where it was unclear;
  • the accessibility work in PDF/UA (PDF for Universal Accessibility, defining specifications to support assistive technology to enable blind, partially sighted and other disabled people to access document content);
  • the archival work in PDF/A (PDF for Archiving, defining specifications to support long term storage of document content);
  • Adobe’s extensions to PDF for Acrobat 9.0, 9.1 and 9.2, and requests from other vendors;
  • the PAdES specifications from ETSI defining methodologies for digital signatures.

    • For some people this feast of new features will be very welcome; for others it’s another set of things that will need developing for or testing against, and runs the risk of destabilising their use of PDF. Either way, there’s nothing much to be done through 2010, because the most likely publication date for 32000-2 is probably the second half of 2011.

    Wishing you all a Merry Christmas and a Prosperous New Year!

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