Adobe wants PDF to become the formally recognized standard

Alexander Turcic · 01-29-2007, 05:46 AM

In a press release today Adobe announced that they're seeking ISO standardization for their just-released PDF 1.7 specification. Quote:

Quote:

"Today’s announcement is the next logical step in the evolution of PDF from de facto standard to a formal, de jure standard,” said Kevin Lynch, senior vice president and chief software architect at Adobe. “By releasing the full PDF specification for ISO standardization, we are reinforcing our commitment to openness. As governments and organizations increasingly request open formats, maintenance of the PDF specification by an external and participatory organization will help continue to drive innovation and expand the rich PDF ecosystem that has evolved over the past 15 years."

Before you get too excited (or not) about yet another proposed document standard (heck, if you want to believe Adobe, PDF is already the standard), keep in mind that it can take anywhere from 12-30 months for a proposed standard to be ratified.

[via Adobe Blogs]

TadW · 01-29-2007, 05:50 AM

Scobleizer (who I think had the scoop), adds:

So, why would Adobe do this? Tons of governments are forcing standards-based purchase requirements and Adobe wanted to make sure that its customers could continue choosing PDF and Acrobat as a standards-based way to send information around the network, they told me in a press call on Friday.

ath · 01-29-2007, 06:05 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alexander Turcic

Before you get too excited (or not) about yet another proposed document standard (while some may believe PDF is already the standard), [...]

If not *the* standard, there is at least already an ISO standard (ISO 19005-1:2005 -- see Wikipedia article), based on a subset of PDF 1.4 suitable for long-term preservation of documents. That means there's no multimedia contents, or other things that relies on plugins or other special solutions that could mess up the document after a few years of storage.

There has been work to do a new revision of this ISO standard using a later version of PDF. I hope Adobe still continue that work -- I suspect it would have somewhat better chances of being accepted.

UncleDuke · 01-29-2007, 01:59 PM

Will 1.7 work on the Sony Reader? Will we all have to get new updates and readers?

Laurens · 01-29-2007, 05:18 PM

Let them first do decent v1.4 support, then we'll talk about v1.5+.

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01-29-2007, 05:50 AM	#2
TadW Uebermensch Posts: 2,583 Karma: 1094606 Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: Italy Device: Kindle	Scobleizer (who I think had the scoop), adds: So, why would Adobe do this? Tons of governments are forcing standards-based purchase requirements and Adobe wanted to make sure that its customers could continue choosing PDF and Acrobat as a standards-based way to send information around the network, they told me in a press call on Friday.

01-29-2007, 01:59 PM	#4
UncleDuke books & doughnuts Posts: 882 Karma: 37857 Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: usa Device: sony reader, kindle2	Will 1.7 work on the Sony Reader? Will we all have to get new updates and readers?

01-29-2007, 05:18 PM	#5
Laurens Jah Blessed Posts: 1,295 Karma: 1373 Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: The Netherlands Device: iPod Touch	Let them first do decent v1.4 support, then we'll talk about v1.5+.

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