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?
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