[pdftex] PDF 1.5 by default in TL 2010

[Reinhard Kotucha]

On 15 January 2011 John Culleton wrote:

 > On Sunday 10 January 2010 20:09:13 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.
 > >
 > > The executables etex, pdftex, pdflatex, luatex, and lualatex
 > > would be affected (among other more obscure ones).  Of course
 > > it's irrelevant to "tex". ConTeXt has been using 1.5 for some
 > > time.
 > >
 > > We've done a fair amount of research and can't find any
 > > significant and reasonably current software that doesn't support
 > > 1.5.  For instance, Acrobat5 does not read it, but Acrobat6 does.
 > > PDFBox-0.7.3.jar (3 years old) doesn't read it, but 0.8 (>1 year)
 > > does.
 > >
 > > >From Taco, we know that the iLiad e-reader and others do not
 > > > support
 > >
 > > 1.5, but they have such specialized needs anyway that this does
 > > not seem like a stopper.
 > >
 > > If anyone knows of other reasons not to make the change, please
 > > speak up.
 > >
 > > This'll be mentioned again, but I thought to bring it up early,
 > > too.
 > >
 > > Thanks,
 > > Karl

 > Some major POD printers want cover art and other color material to
 > be in pdf X/1-a:2001, and old and restrictive standard. So perhaps
 > there should be a command to select the pdf output model, and pdf
 > x/1-a should be included.  I convinced the Scribus people to offer
 > that model on their developmental version (1.5.0).

Hi John,
regarding the PDF version, you can set 

  \pdfminorversion=4\relax
  \pdfobjcompresslevel=0\relax

in order to revert to PDF-1.4.

There is a LaTeX package pdfx.sty which supports PDF/X-1a and
PDF/A-1b.  I'm sure that you can use it in plain TeX if you can get
hyperref work.

   texdoc pdfx

Regards,
  Reinhard

-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reinhard Kotucha                                      Phone: +49-511-3373112
Marschnerstr. 25
D-30167 Hannover                              mailto:reinhard.kotucha at web.de
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Microsoft isn't the answer. Microsoft is the question, and the answer is NO.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------