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PDF/A 'Missing PDF/A tag'

ddavidson5
Registered: Jun 28 2007
Posts: 2

Wondering if you can help. We are testing PDF/A creation software on our AS400 server. Our test process was very simple...
 
1. Create PDF/A files from sample files in the AS400 output queue using the new option of converting to PDF/A using *PDFAA4 as a parameter
2. FTP the files over to our Windows server
3. Run Apago PDF Appraiser software on the files to test compliance with PDF/A standard. (We very often use PDF Appraiser to perform bulk conversions of documents from PDF to PDF/A.)
 
After running PDF Appraiser, I checked the log files, and found that there is one error in all the files generated by PDF/A creation software on our AS400 which PDF Appraiser fixed.
 
In order to figure out the exact error that Appraiser was fixing in the files, I opened one of the original AS400 PDF files converted in Acrobat Professional 7.0 and ran the tool 'Pre-Flight' to check compliance, and the error it returned was 'Missing PDF/A tag'.
When checked using Acrobat Professional 8.0 there was no error.
 
The AS400 PDF/A creation software vendor (GUMBO) says: "There was a disagreement on the interpretation of the standard between Adobe and just about everyone else. Adobe has come around on this and corrected the 'Missing PDF/A tag' in Acrobat 8."
 
So is PDF Appraiser wrong and detecting an error that doesn't exist or is this something I should be worried about for long term archiving?

My Product Information:
Acrobat Pro 8, Windows
Registered: Sep 24 2005
Posts: 252
Acrobat 7 was initially shipped with the PDF/A draft setting and once 7.0.5 was released as a patch, it contained the actual ISO standard.

So indeed, you might be missing the real PDF/A tag in PDFs which were created between the draft and actual accreditation of the PDF/A standard.

Jon

I've been using Acrobat since v1.0 and still get amazed by its power. An Acrobat ACE since 1999