[pdftex] PDF 1.5 by default in TL 2010

[Ross Moore]

Hi Reinhard and John,

Sent from my iPad

On 16/01/2011, at 6:18 AM, Reinhard Kotucha <reinhard.kotucha at web.de> wrote:

> 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.

Be careful what you mean by this.

The package produces the metadata content for the header of a PDF file, declaring that it is PDF/A ( 1a or 1b). However it does nothing to ensure that the content actually conforms to the rules for these formats. 
For example, it cannot generate interword spaces, which are a vital part of the PDF/A spec.

For this you need the experimental PdfTeX+tagging version, that I have used for my last 2 TUG talks, at the 2009 and 2010 meetings.

>  I'm sure that you can use it in plain TeX if you can get
> hyperref work.
> 
>   texdoc pdfx
> 
> Regards,
>  Reinhard


Hope this helps,

    Ross



> 
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