PDF

From Just Solve the File Format Problem
Revision as of 12:11, 31 March 2015 by Dan Tobias (Talk | contribs)

Jump to: navigation, search
File Format
Name PDF
Ontology
Extension(s) .pdf
MIME Type(s) application/pdf
LoCFDD fdd000146, others
PRONOM fmt/276, others

Portable Document Format (PDF) is a document file format originally from Adobe, based on PostScript. It has many subsets.

As well as the 'full function' ISO 32000-1:2008 (or PDF 1.7), there are also PDF/X, PDF/A, PDF/E, PDF/VT and PDF/UA, all of which are ISO specifications.

PDF profiles (formalized subsets) include the following:

  • PDF/A (optimized for preservation)
    • PDF/A-1 (ISO 19005-1:2005)
    • PDF/A-2 (ISO 19005-2:2011)
    • PDF/A-3 (ISO 19005-3:2012) (extends PDF/A-2 by allowing embedded files of any type)
  • PDF/E (ISO 24517-1:2008) (for engineering workflows)
  • PDF/UA (ISO 14289-1) (making documents accessible through assistive technologies)
  • PDF/VT (ISO 16612-2) (support for variable document printing)
  • PDF/X (support for prepress graphics exchange)
    • PDF/X-1 (ISO 15930-1:2001)
    • PDF/X-1a (ISO 15930-4:2003)
    • PDF/X-2 (ISO 15930-5:2003)
    • PDF/X-3 (ISO 15930-6:2003)
  • Tagged PDF

Contents

Identifiers

Format PRONOM LoCFDD
PDF fdd000146
PDF 1.0 fmt/14 fdd000316
PDF 1.1 fmt/15
PDF 1.2 fmt/16
PDF 1.3 fmt/17
PDF 1.4 fmt/18 fdd000122
PDF 1.5 fmt/19 fdd000123
PDF 1.6 fmt/20 fdd000276
PDF 1.7 fmt/276 fdd000277
PDF 1.7, Ext. 3 fdd000313
PDF/A fdd000318
PDF/A-1 fdd000125
PDF/A-1a fmt/95 fdd000251
PDF/A-1b fmt/354 fdd000252
PDF/A-2 fdd000319
PDF/A-2a fmt/476 fdd000320
PDF/A-2b fmt/477 fdd000322
PDF/A-2u fmt/478 fdd000321
PDF/A-3a fmt/479 fdd000360
PDF/A-3b fmt/480
PDF/A-3u fmt/481
PDF/X-1 fmt/144, fmt/145 fdd000124
PDF/X-1a fmt/157, fmt/146
PDF/X-2 fmt/147
PDF/X-3 fmt/158, fmt/148
PDF/X-4 fmt/488
PDF/X-4p fmt/489
PDF/X-5g fmt/490
PDF/X-5pg fmt/491
PDF/X-5n fmt/492
PDF/UA-1 fdd000350
PDF/E-1 fmt/493
PDF, Geospatial fdd000315
GeoPDF 2.2 fdd000312

Identification

The majority of PDF files can be identified by a fixed header e.g. "%PDF-1.4", however, older documents have a number of variations.

Compression

Images in PDF documents may use the following compression schemes:

Digital Rights Management & Encryption

PDF has two types of 'encryption' - it uses an 'user' password to limit the ability to open the document, and a 'creator' password to limit other rights, like printing, copying, etc. The former case, where a password is required to open the file, is the main preservation concern, as our users will not be able to open a PDF encrypted in this way (unless the password can be cracked, which may be problematic both technically and legally). However, the latter case causes problems, because the PDF is encrypted here too, but with a special known user password of "" (an empty string, which is not the same as no password). So, the document is encrypted in both cases, and you can only tell which is which by attempting to decrypt the PDF using the special default password "". Some PDF analysis tools (notably JHOVE) do not implement the relevant decryption workflow, and so cannot distinguish between the two types of encryption.

An example of the decryption test workflow can be found here: https://gist.github.com/anjackson/5237071

Some of the most locked-up PDFs anywhere can be found at the ANSI IBR Standards Portal, which has made certain standards documents that are incorporated into legislation available for browsing, but only through a convoluted procedure involving downloading a special plug-in and filling out a registration form that must be re-filled-out in every browsing session.

A "Protected PDF" (PPDF) format is reportedly used by Microsoft's Azure Rights Management Service for sharing files securely within a workgroup.

Specifications

  • Adobe PDF References Contains links to every version of the PDF Reference published by Adobe (starting with PDF 1.0) as well as associated errata, addenda and tech notes.
  • Other sources of the above documents:

Software

Online utilities

Sample files

Links

Format info

Validation

Jailbreaking

Commentary

Miscellaneous

Personal tools
Namespaces

Variants
Actions
Navigation
Toolbox