PDF gets ISO approval
What's up Doc?
ADOBE'S UBIQUITOUS Portable Document Format, fondly known as PDF, has been given the aproval of the International Standards Organisation and is now the proud bearer of its own badge of honour, ISO 32000-1.
The accolade follows a decision by Adobe to relinquish control of the standard to ISO, which is now in charge of publishing the specifications for the current version (1.7) and for updating and developing future versions.
"By releasing the full PDF specification for ISO standardisation, we are reinforcing our commitment to openness", claimed Kevin Lynch, Chief Technology Officer at Adobe. "As governments and organisations increasingly request open formats, maintenance of the PDF specification by an external and participatory organisation will help continue to drive innovation and expand the rich PDF ecosystem that has evolved over the past 15 years."
PDF has become one of the most common formats for document exchange, widely used in all professional and personal contexts. The format enables creators and users to view and edit documents in a WYSIWYG format, with a free reader, without fannying about with fonts and other such arcane shenanigans. µ
Comments
If anyone else was confused...
PDF/X (and its numerous ISO versions, dating back to 2001 at least) is apparently a subset, along with PDF/A (ISO, published in 2005) and many other "flavors" I'd never heard of.So the news is that the *complete* specification is being handed off to, and published by, ISO.
Pointless Document Format
Just what we need in the modern computer age:a format that almost invariably has to be printed out to be read. Just what we need for the paperless office.
I can hear computer historians of the future laughing now:
What did they do with their data at the start of the twentieth century? They encrypted it in things called documents so it would be really hard to utilise later! And then they spent a fortune on wide screens that were completely incompatible with their 'paper' formats.
Good
I think PDF is the best commonly used print quality page layout format around.If it's going to be an ISO standard then I suggest Open Office & co., and MS, settle on PDF for the standard save format for their word processors and presentation software.
ISO
...given the approval of the International Standards Organization....Isn't it International Organization for Standardization ???