[pdftex] PDF 1.5 by default in TL 2010

[Axel E. Retif]

On  10 Jan, 2010, at 19:09, Karl Berry wrote:

> (Sorry for the cross-posting.)
> 
> For TL 2010, we would like to change the default PDF output version to
> PDF 1.5 (proposed by Elie Roux).  This is so we can use
> \pdfcompresslevel and generate noticeably smaller PDF's by default.

> 
> [...]

On  18 Jan, 2010, at 13:20, John Culleton wrote:

> [...]
> 
> In the USA several major POD (digital) printer prefer or insist on 
> PDF/X-1a:2001, such as the largest, LSI, but also 360 Digital Books.  Baker 
> and Taylor's new digital service Textstream prefers pdf 1.4.  So these should 
> be ready options for TL 2010.

As it is today, you can't get a PDF/X-1a:2001 compliant PDF with pdfTeX either.

I managed to get a 100% PDF/X-1a:2001 compliant PDF (a 720 pages book with hundreds of graphics) using the excellent pdfx.sty (thank you so much, CV Radhakrishnan and Han The Thanh!). After some trial and error, I found the best loading order to be

\documentclass{book}%
\usepackage[10pt]{type1ec}%        <- I use Greek
\usepackage{verse}
\usepackage[x-1a]{pdfx}
\usepackage{fixltx2e}[2006/03/24]%

and a long, long preamble follows.

Most of the time spent achieving this, was changing several Illustrator graphics that weren't OK for PDF/X-1a (TikZ graphics were fine).

So I definitely vote YES for pdf 1.5 as the default for TL 2010 ---it has many advantages for common use, and, if we need pdf 1.3 or whatever, we can always resort to \pdfminorversion or pdfx.sty.

Best,

Axel