Question
Which version of iText and pd4ml supports PDF/A version 3?
PDF/A version 3 is not supported in PRPC . Bradesco has asked a response to the following – email thread below provides further details
“confirm which version of iText and pd4ml will support required specification (PDF/A Ver 3) and whether it works by replacing the existing open source libraries with licensed libraries ?”
Message was edited by: Vidyaranjan Av | Included Category
I've sent an email to PD4ML customer support asking for the specifics around their support of specific PDF/A versions. The version of PD4ML that ships with Pega 7 is 398fx4a1 Pro DMS. We have no current plans to upgrade, but we may re-evaluate based on what I hear back about my inquiry.
Here's the response I got from PD4ML customer support re/ my inquiry:
- PD4ML supports PDF/A-1b (which refers to "Version 1")
- Versions 2 and 3 are extensions of the Version 1 and backward compatible. For example, Version 3 spec allows to embed file attachments to PDF (which was forbidden by the Version 1). So in principle, if PDF file is passed PDF/A-1b validation (means, has no attachments), it passes also PDF/A-3.
- I picked an arbitrary PDF/A file, generated by PD4ML and validated it in Adobe Acrobat Pro (with Preflight built-in tool) - it successfully passed PDF/A-2 validation. (My slightly outdated version of Acrobat Pro does not validate PDF/A-3)
Hopefully you got the main idea: PD4ML outputs PDF/A, which can pass PDF/A-3 validation. But if your customer needs a support of PDF/A-2 and -3 extensions, they has to be implemented by us. In the case we need to know what exactly is desired.
Newer versions of iText do appear to explicitly support PDF/A-3: PDF/A-3 with iText | iText Developers
We stopped upgrading our iText libraries a while back because they instituted a licensing change that was incompatible with our distribution model. It's possible that the customer could purchase a license for iText that they could use to convert every PDF document generated by Pega to PDF/A-3. This is outside the scope of what the core Pega platform provides however. The version of iText that currently ships with Pega is 2.1.7.
You indicated that there is an "email thread which provides further details" but there is none provided. Can you please provide more detail to your question?
PD4ML does support PDF/A generation. I cannot verify what version of PDF/A format is supported, but it's important to note that v2 and v3 only add enhancements to what is permissible in a PDF/A document - therefore a PDF/A v1 document actually fully meets the standard for PDF/A v3 format (Remember, this is an long-term archival format.)
Currently PD4ML's site is down so I was unable to further research this issue.