[luatex] CIDSet in PDF/A documents

[Reinhard Kotucha]

On 2015-06-23 at 11:30:45 +0200, Hans Hagen wrote:

 > On 6/23/2015 3:25 AM, Reinhard Kotucha wrote:
 > > Hi,
 > > at
 > >
 > >    http://tracker.luatex.org/view.php?id=434
 > >
 > > Hans wrote
 > >
 > >   > pdf/a demands a cidset but we will forget about this till we find a
 > >   > proper example
 > >   >
 > >   > there is still some reported problem with some stream objects not
 > >   > properly being formatted cf. pdf/a but it is not clear what is
 > >   > going on there
 > >
 > > This message is now five years old.  Any new perceptions?
 > >
 > > I'm using a TrueType font (CharisSIL) and one of five PDF/A validators
 > > complains about a bad CIDSet.
 > >
 > > I created a small PDF file which only contains the string "abc",
 > > extracted the TTF from the PDF file, and disassembled it with TTX.
 > > Then I assembled the CIDSet manually according to the instructions
 > > given in the PDF/A-1 specification (ISO 19005-1).  I've got the same
 > > result as LuaTeX, hence it's unclear to me what's going wrong.
 > >
 > > The PDFtron
 > >
 > >    https://www.pdftron.com/
 > >
 > > validator sais
 > >
 > >    <Error Code="e_PDFA356" Message="CIDSet in subset font is incomplete" Refs="95, 101"/>
 > >
 > > I tend to believe that the validator is wrong.  On the other hand
 > > PDFtron offers software which creates PDF/A files and I can't
 > > imagine that their validator complains about their own products.
 > 
 > what does acrobat say

Acrobat Pro v.11 doesn't complain.

 > (about validators being ok: recently we had an issue with a
 > validator used by a publisher that couldn't handle xforms properly
 > and in the process of copying/flattening messed with the lines in a
 > way that made them all disappear for successive instances)

I suppose that you wasted a lot of time.  It's good in such cases if
you can convince the publisher that his tool is faulty, but this can
be time-consuming too.

 > > Did anybody investigate?  The nasty thing is that PDF/A is for long
 > > term preservation and any file we create today has to comply with the
 > > standard unconditionally.  And for us TeX users, the fact that there
 > > are zillions of invalid PDF/A files around just because old versions
 > > of the Acrobat preflight tool ignored most errors, is not an excuse.
 > > We should do better.
 > 
 > or there should be a way to repair them (what else to do with the 
 > zillion files .. regenerate them?)

Repairing files is an acceptable solution if you created them yourself
but it's nearly impossible if you gave the workflow to your customers.
And the need to repair files later doesn't enhance the reputation of
the program which created them.  I'm not worried about all the other
programs but I'm very careful when TeX is involved.

Regards,
  Reinhard

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Reinhard Kotucha                            Phone: +49-511-3373112
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