The PDF/A Converter is composed of components of the PDF Xpansion SDK. It processes documents that conform to the PDF specification (versions 1.0 – 2.0) and to ISO 32000 standards (versions 1 and 2).
The PDF/A Converter provides conversion of PDF documents and streams to PDF/A-1, PDF/A-2, PDF/A-3 and PDF/A-4. You can buy and use each PDF/A version (1, 2, 3, 4) separately, while the decision for a specific version automatically entitles you to support all conformity levels of that version (a, b, u, f, and e).
The PDF/A Converter saves documents to files conforming to ISO 32000 standards (versions 1 and 2). PDF/A-1 is the oldest PDF/A standard, published as ISO standard for an electronic document file format for long-term preservation. Files that comply with the PDF/A-2 standard additionally may use JPG2000 compression, transparencies and layers. And they are allowed to have PDF/A-1 files embedded. The PDF/A-3 standard allows embedding files of any type, not just PDF/A files. This liberalization of the standard has several implications: for example, you may now enable the users of your document archiving and DMS solutions to embed the source documents into the PDF/A archive files. PDF/A-3 files may also be used to carry XML files that consist of the billing data for e-invoicing solutions. That allowed, the PDF/A-3 file may hold both a visual representation of the invoice (in the PDF part of the file), and a part that may be read and processed directly by e-billing/e-invoicing applications. Therefore, for example the e-invoicing formats FACTUR-X (French) or ZUGFeRD (German) may be used to embed the respective XML-based invoicing data into PDF/A-3 files.
In November 2020, ISO additionally published part 4 of the standard (PDF/A-4), which is based on PDF 2.0, while the three other parts are based on previous versions. This additional standard is meant to ensure a static visual representation of page-based electronic documents over time, regardless of the tools and systems used for creating, storing or rendering them. On the other hand, the standard also allows the use of interactive (non-static) content as embedded files.
In contrast to the three other PDF/A standards, PDF/A-4 defines only two conformance levels: “f” and “e”. PDF/A-4f allows that embedded files may be of any type. PDF/A4e for engineering allows embedding 3D files in the formats U3D and PRC.
The component includes a special callback interface. This status parameter is optional, but recommended to allow monitoring the PDF/A conversion process. You need to implement it to get detailed information about the conversion procedure: Some PDF documents, which are nonetheless correct, cannot be correctly converted to the PDF/A format, and the method fails. Using callback messaging, you get the detailed reason for the conversion failure.
