[pdftex] PDF/X1a

[David Rendon]

On Feb 29, 2008, at 6:44 PM, John Culleton wrote:

> On Thursday 28 February 2008 05:31:22 pm John Culleton wrote:
>> The new LSI printing specs require that a book block be set at PDF/ 
>> X-1a or
>> PDF/X-1a:2001, an old standard dating back to 2001.  Ironically  
>> this is
>> necessary for one to use their newest OCE printer. pdftex files use a
>> different notation, on my copy PDF-1.4. It may be that LSI is  
>> looking for
>> the exact string PDF/X-1a in the pdf file.
>>
>> Two problems. First we are dealing with two different notations.  
>> Second,
>> PDF-1.4 may not be correct and PDF-1.5 may be the equivalent.
>>
>> Does anyone have any clarification on this?
>
> Further on the above. My source for such things states that the string
> PDF/X
> must appear somewhere in the file to indicate compliance with the
> PDF/X-1a:2001 standard. This does not appear in any of my pdftex  
> produced
> files. I can of course patch that into the file with an editor but I  
> doubt
> that would be sufficient.

John, I don't have real experience with PDF/X, but my understanding is  
that it defines a *subset* of the PDF standard aimed at providing more  
reliable and consistent results when processing and printing the file  
in different systems. I don't think the PDF files generated by pdftex  
are PDF/X compliant, and I doubt just changing a string in the header  
will make them compliant.

I'm in a similar situation, where I need to generate PDF/A compliant  
files. (PDF/A is a subset of the PDF standard that tries to ensure  
that archived documents will be interpreted in the exact same way by  
future PDF readers --things like font versions, etc). I have no hopes  
of getting pdftex to generate PDF/A, but I found that Acrobat  
Professional 8 handles the conversion just fine (unless I need  
hyperlinks, which I do: that required a small and ugly hack of  
heperref.sty -- see my message of Jan 30).

I hope I'm wrong about PDF/X, though.



David Rendon