Industry News

• September 20, 2010 - PDF/VT Variant for Simplified Variable Data Printing Released

  ISO has completed the development of an international standard defining the job exchange format for Variable Data Printing (VDP). ISO 16612-2 Graphic technology - Variable data exchange - Part 2: Using PDF/X-4 and PDF/X-5 (PDF/VT) defines the PDF/VT document format and methods to enable PDF exchange for variable data and transactional printing.

• July 2, 2008 - PDF Format Becomes ISO Standard

  The PDF (Portable Document Format) originally developed by Adobe has now been passed over to the Geneva-based International Organization for Standardization (ISO). This comes just a year and a half after Adobe made plans to open up by giving the specification (version 1.7) to the Association for Information and Image Management (AIIM) which was to lay the groundwork for ISO certification. The ISO has now issued a press release about the new standard (named "ISO 32000-1:2008").

  PDF/A Already an ISO Standard

  PDF/A, a popular subset of the PDF specification, has been an ISO Standard that since October 1, 2005 - ISO 19005-1: Document Management - Electronic document file format for long term preservation - Part 1: Use of PDF 1.4 (PDF/A-1).

  This ISO standard defines a standard format (PDF/A-1) for the long-term archiving of electronic documents and is based on the PDF Reference Version 1.4 from Adobe Systems Inc. (PDF 1.4 is largely equivalent to the functionality implemented in Adobe Acrobat 5).

• April 1, 2008 - Microsoft's Office Open XML becomes an ISO/IEC Standard

  Microsoft's Office Open XML formats specification that in 2006 became a free and open Ecma International Standard, has now passed approval to become an ISO/IEC 29500:2008 Standard.

• July 2, 2007 - Microsoft Initiates Standardization Process for XPS

  Microsoft has debuted an initiative designed to take the XML Paper Specification (XPS) through the standardization process and offer an alternative to the Portable Document Format (PDF). As was the case with Open XML, Microsoft will be supported by Ecma, which has already set up a Technical Committee to push XPS.