PDF is now ISO 32000-1, an international standard

By Scott M. Fulton, III | Published July 2, 2008, 12:53 PM

The next version of Microsoft Office, still called "Office 14," will support by user-chosen defaults at least two published international standard document formats. But at least for now, neither of them was Microsoft's to begin with.

This morning, the International Organization for Standardization announced its completed publication of ISO 32000-1, rendering the Portable Document Format effectively the property of the people at large. It is no longer Adobe's PDF.

In a statement this morning, ISO Secretary-General Alan Bryden praised the publication, using language that some may have expected was reserved for ISO 29500 -- the Open XML format whose formal specification process has been indefinitely delayed by four countries' appeals.

"The standard will benefit both software developers and users by encouraging the propagation and dissemination of a common technology that cuts across systems and is designed for long term survival," Bryden said.

On the ISO's enumerated map of progress, this puts PDF right at the sweet spot of status code 60.60. By comparison, ISO 29500 is stuck at 40.99, where the final draft of the standard is ready for registration but which awaits final approval.

Like Open XML, PDF 1.7 was introduced to ISO by another standards association, in this case AIIM (the former Association for Information and Image Management). Throughout 2007 and into the following year, ISO members issued a multitude of suggestions for improving and making "normative" the draft specification, including making references to software more vendor-neutral (by removing references to Adobe and Acrobat, for instance), excising portions of the draft standard that were being maintained purely for downward compatibility with previous Adobe products, adding the letter "u" to "colour," and replacing plain active voice with more emphatic active voice, such as replacing the verb "are" with "shall be."

These were among the many little issues that jostled, but did not upset, the PDF standardization effort, and about which very little attention was paid, perhaps because the fact that Adobe was the author did nothing to change their relative triviality.

Comments

After all PDF is a binary format. It'll be dumped sooner or later. Go with XPS or Mars if you want "long term survival".

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Can you store photos or other bit-mapped graphics inside a text-only format?

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Unlike images that fixed and no change. Pdf will be added new features time over time. Some day you cannot open old file because no program can open it.

XPS and Mars are XML base format. It store XML and images(JPG, PNG...), font files inside a container (zip). Since jpg, png, font are no change, its hardly die. And XML can add new feature without breaking file format. New program can open all old format without doing anything.

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So, your answer is NO.

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Bitmap image can store data as text. It just as normal image but the size will be bigger than binary format.

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Example:

All posts on the usenet are in text format.

...most are encoded binary images and files. :)

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What a difference integrity makes in the process compared to the MS-OOXML debacle, which was one of the great blunders in tech history now that Microsoft is effectively giving up on the standard in favor of ODF. How many does that make for Microsoft now. (I'm sure toolsie will soon race to correct us.)

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Not even going to bother. You're so full of BS there isn't a soul here who would even think twice about ignoring you completely.

You have zero credibility here. None. You could rant and rave all you want for all the effect it would have on anyone's opinions on the topic...and of course, you know our opinion of you.

Now quick: Log out and log back in as one of your more creative alts and start making gay jokes and posting the link to your stupid. Hey, call your buddy El Dingo, too. He might want to chime in with some infantile outburst or another.

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I love when the two or three people who troll these forums on multiple alts talk about credibility. Or for that matter, anyone on an internet forum talking about credibility.

Do you even know what that word means?

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....and there he is. Right on cue.

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