Compliance to PDF Standards

PTC ALD supports the publishing of PDF output that conforms to PDF/X, PDF/A, and PDF/UA (ISO 14289–1:2014) standards. Options in the Standards tab of the PDF Options dialog box allow you to confirm the standard to which PDF output should conform.

Compliance to standards can be verified in the output PDF by the Preflight checks available in Adobe Acrobat 8 onwards.

Specification of color profiles for PDF output is required to ensure compliance to standards. Refer to the sections Color Profile Support and Color Profile Support for Graphics in this topic for information on PTC ALD support for color profiles.

PTC ALD will validate the standards settings configured for a document during PDF publishing. Refer to Validation of Standards Configuration for PDF in this topic for further information. You may need to make choices on other areas of the PDF Options dialog box to ensure full compliance to a standard. For example, the output of tagged PDF is required to conform to the PDF/A-1a or PDF/UA standards. You will need to make this selection separately (in the General tab) if you have selected PDF/A-1a or PDF/UA-1 in the Standards tab of the dialog box.

Refer to Tagged PDF Output for further information about generating tagged PDF output.

Please take care when importing pages from a PDF into a document whose PDF output must conform to a specific PDF/X standard. The imported pages must conform to the same PDF/X conformance level as the generated output document, or to an older version of the same level.

Refer to Embedded PDF Pages for information on importing PDF pages into a document.

The Standards tab on the PDF Options dialog box includes fields where you can select a particular variant of a PDF/X, PDF/A, or PDF/UA standard.

The Standard group includes drop down lists for selecting standards, plus notes of some considerations to bear in mind when selecting a standard.

• PDF/X — a drop down list that includes all currently supported variants of the PDF/X standard. The default is None.

• PDF/A — a drop down list that includes all currently supported variants of the PDF/A standard. The default is None.

Note that for each variant listed, their entry in the list includes a note of the required PDF Version associated with it (for example, PDF/A-1a 2005 (PDF 1.4)). You must make the relevant selection in the Compatibility field on the General tab of the PDF Options dialog box to ensure full compliance to the selected PDF Standard.

The fPPDFTagElement object provides properties corresponding to attributes for PDF Tags that will conform to PDF standards. For example, to support tagged PDF conforming to PDF/UA:

As part of its support for publishing PDF/X and PDF/A compliant PDF, PTC ALD provides the capability to specify color profiles for PDF output that complies with the standards. PTC ALD also permits the use of color profiles that are independent of the standards.

Color profile information can be verified in the output PDF by the Preflight checks available in Adobe Acrobat 8 onwards.

The Standards tab on the PDF Options dialog box contains fields that support the specification of a color profile for PDF output that conforms to PDF/X and PDF/A standards.

The Output Intent group allows the selection of either an ICC Color Profile or a Standard PDF/X Output Intent.

• ICC Colour Profile —a text field where you can enter the name of a color profile. The profile must be installed on the system.

This field will be ignored if a selection has been made in the PDF/X Standard Output Intent field and PDF/X-1 or PDF/X-3 is selected in the PDF/X field in the Standard group of the PDF Options dialog box.

• Urls (PDF/X-4p and 5pg only) — a text field where you an enter a value for the urls parameter, which is required with the PDF/X-4p and PDF/X-5pg standards.

This field will be ignored if neither of these standards is selected in the PDF/X field in the Standard group of the PDF Options dialog box.

This setting will only be referenced if either PDF/X-1 or PDF/X-3 is selected in the PDF/X field in the Standard group of the PDF Options dialog box.

◦ PDF/X Standard Output Intent — a drop down list that includes the supported standard profiles. The selected profile does not need to be installed on the system.

The General tab of the PDF Options dialog box includes a Colour Profiles group that allows you to specify color profiles for PDF output that is not intended to conform to PDF/X and PDF/A standards.

• Type the name of an installed color profile in any of the text fields Default CMYK profile, Default Greyscale profile, or Default RGB profile to have it used as the default for the relevant color model.

• Check the Use built in sRGB profile option to use PDFLib’s built-in sRGB profile instead of selecting an installed RGB profile.

The selected profiles will be used as defaults when colors are specified for text, rules, and shading. They will not be applied to graphics.

You can elect to use the color profile information embedded in graphics when placing them in PDF output.

If you select this option, graphics will be passed directly to PDFLib and will not be processed by PTC ALD for color profiling. In addition, settings in the Compression tab of the PDF Options dialog box will be ignored for linked graphics. No color model manipulations will be performed on the graphics.

PTC ALD will return an error message if a graphic is not compatible with the PDF standard selected for the output. Refer to Validation of Standards Configuration for PDF in this section for further information.

The Linked Images field on the General tab of the PDF Options dialog box includes the option Passthrough. Select this option to confirm that the publishing process should use graphics’ embedded color profiles in PDF output.

Passthrough supports images that are directly published to PDF file format. EPS file format images are processed by PStill before being published to PDF file format. Passthrough does not support greyscale EPS images with embedded color profiles.

PTC ALD will validate the selections you made in the PDF Options dialog box to confirm whether PDF output should conform to PDF/X and PDF/A standards. When you initiate printing, PTC ALD will examine the selections and either fix inconsistencies or terminate printing if no correction can be made. Messages confirming any action taken will be displayed in a PDF Standard Configuration Messages dialog box.

For example, outputting PDF to a particular PDF standard may require a specific PDF Version (Compatibility) or color mode, or necessitate the output of tagged PDF. PTC ALD will update the settings made for the PDF where possible, if they have not been set correctly.

It is not always possible to correct inconsistencies in PDF Standard configuration. Please ensure you have thorough knowledge of PDF Standards before making your selections, and consult the results of the printing action for any error notifications.

To configure the APP print engine to publish a PDF file of a desired standard, create and edit an APP print configuration file. You can refer to the standard.appcf file located in the APP subfolder of the Arbortext Styler or PTC Arbortext Publishing Engine installation to create the APP print configuration file. Opening the print configuration file in Arbortext Editor allows you to make required changes as described by a supplied DTD file.

The Compatibility element can use one or more children from APPConfig > Print > PDFPrinter > Compatibility in the XML file:

◦ The level attribute sets the required level of PDF/X. The value can be set to none, 1a2003, 2:2003, 4, 4p, 5g, or 5pg.

◦ The StandardIntent child enables you to specify a standard output intent profile (see the DTD topic for more information).

◦ The ICCProfile child of PDF/X allows you to choose the output color profile. by adding the name of the profile to the Profile attribute value of the ICCProfile element. To set a URL to the desired output color profile, select the ICCProfile element.

◦ The value of the level attribute can be either set to none or 1 depending on the required level of PDF/UA.

If you do not require a specific standard, the Compatibility element can accept a PDF child.

◦ The level attribute sets the required level of PDF. The value can be set to one of the allowed values specified by the DTD file, such as 1.4, 1.7 (the default value), or 2.0.