How can I test a PDF document if it is PDF/A compliant? [closed]

Asked 20/2, 2009 at 10:58 Answered 28/1, 2013 at 2:29

We write a software that create PDF files. How we can check if the resulting pdf files are PDF/A compatible? Are there any test suite for it available?

Rabin answered 20/2, 2009 at 10:58 Comment(5)

Some context for people unfamiliar with PDF/A: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDF/A – Nanceynanchang 21/2, 2009 at 6:29

Related: #465039 – Substantiate 16/8, 2012 at 1:24

access-for-all.ch/en/pdf-lab/pdf-accessibility-checker-pac/… is a tool that validates lots of aspects and explains why things have failed. – Anglo 11/9, 2015 at 7:11

"Moved" to softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/18161/… – Texas 5/10, 2015 at 16:15

verapdf.org is in the process of creating one. – Unideaed 8/12, 2016 at 9:20

A list of PDF/A validators is on the pdfa.org web site here:

verapdf

A free online PDF/A validator is available here:

http://www.validatepdfa.com/

A report on the accuracy of many of these PDF/A validators is available from PDFLib:

https://www.pdflib.com/fileadmin/pdflib/pdf/pdfa/2009-05-04-Bavaria-report-on-PDFA-validation-accuracy.pdf

Se as well:

https://www.pdflib.com/knowledge-base/pdfa/

Brookes answered 2/3, 2010 at 21:55 Comment(3)

This one is open source github.com/gba-awl/padaf – Donor 8/9, 2011 at 18:53

Now known as PDFBox Preflight pdfbox.apache.org/downloads.html#recent – Dygall 17/11, 2014 at 22:11

Unfortunately the link at pdf.org is not available any more. At verapdf.org you will probably find the most "official" online tool for PDF validation. It is quite new and afaik in Beta. Until this changes I also stick with the preflight-validation of Adobe Acrobat – Diphtheria 1/3, 2017 at 10:17

The 3-Heights™ PDF Validator Online Tool provides good feedback for different PDF/A conformance levels and versions.

PDF/A1-a
PDF/A2-a
PDF/A2-b
PDF/A1-b
PDF/A2-u

Shepherd answered 28/1, 2013 at 2:29 Comment(6)

pdf-tools.com/pdf/pdf-validateur-pdfa-valider-iso.aspx – Northeasterly 23/10, 2014 at 14:5

Very nice. This gives me a list of "violations" of PDF/A for my file, such as The value of the key Parent is 271 0 R but must be 208 0 R. But I have no idea how to "fix" these. I tried saving in the free adobe acrobat but it doesn't help. – Lavelle 23/7, 2018 at 23:10

Here is something that just worked for me on my mac laptop: I opened my (ordinary) PDF file in the mac "Preview" software. I "printed" it as a .ps file. I then re-opened the .ps file in Preview and saved as PDF. It now passes the pdf/a compliance. – Lavelle 23/7, 2018 at 23:40

Thanks @Michael, that was helpful! For those on Linux, I tried something similar which also worked: I opened the file on evince, and printed it to a PDF file. The resulting file passed PDF/A validation! Note that simply doing "File > Save as" was not sufficient; I had to use the Print menu for this to work. – Toreador 1/8, 2019 at 21:45

The link seems dead unfortunately... – Disloyal 15/10, 2023 at 0:16

@Disloyal Unfortunately the product is no longer available for free and requires a 30-day trial license. I will try to find another link that is similarly useful. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find one yet. – Shepherd 16/10, 2023 at 20:10

pdf validation with OPEN validator:

DROID (Digital Record Object Identification) https://github.com/digital-preservation/droid/

JHOVE - JSTOR/Harvard Object Validation Environment https://jhove.openpreservation.org/

Sneak answered 9/7, 2012 at 8:51 Comment(5)

DROID doesn't validate, it only identifies. JHOVE does validate PDFs, but not PDF/A. – Limitative 30/5, 2013 at 14:54

Jhove does validate PDF/A. Check there site: link.... – Carrack 26/10, 2014 at 8:17

Ibn Saeed: citing from the linked doc: Note that the PDF module does not parse the contents on streams, so it cannot determine conformance to PDF/A to the degree required by the ISO standard. – Delastre 29/6, 2015 at 14:33

@Delastre «That is not possible, since parts of the PDF/A rules are not machine-checkable AFAIK (like "metadata matches data" -- jhove is unable to understand the semantics of your document).» konradvoelkel.com/2013/03/scan-to-pdfa/#comment-2705 – Texas 5/10, 2015 at 15:9

Jhove's PDF/A module is quite buggy. Its output is nearly meaningless. – Amp 20/2, 2017 at 21:58

Do you have Adobe PDFL or Acrobat Professional? You can use preflight operation if you do.

Sheen answered 20/2, 2009 at 11:11 Comment(0)

-6

If you download the latest version of Adobe Acrobat Reader, it will tell you if your pdf is PDF/A compliant. Just open the PDF file and a big blue marking should appear.

OpenOffice supports PDF/A. For some reason "PDF/A-1" is called

"SelectPdfVersion"

internally in OpenOffice. Just add 1 to that value and your output should be PDF/A.

The different values can be

0 = PDFXNONE
1 = PDFX1A2001
2 = PDFX32002
3 = PDFA1A
4 = PDFA1B

You set

FilterData

to be a

HashMap('SelectPdfVersion',1) //1 for PDFX1A2001

Gaius answered 17/3, 2010 at 11:46 Comment(3)

This is wrong. The Reader show only if the PDF/A signature is available. Not if it is a valid PDF/A file. – Rabin 18/3, 2010 at 12:50

@Rabin can you site your sources for this? How do you know this? I have used a few API's that generate PDF/A and non PDF/A compliant files. When I produce a PDF/A file, Adobe Reader 10 will launch with an informational bar at top:O "The file you have opened complies with the PDF/A standard and has been opened read-only to prevent modification". Can you share what you know about this?L – Bohlen 19/7, 2012 at 3:35

We have write a software that generate PDF and PDF/A files (see my original posting). That I know that also not PDF/A compliance files was show as PDF/A file in Adobe Reader. We need only write the PDF/A signature. – Rabin 25/7, 2012 at 20:7

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