The veraPDF consortium today announced the release of veraPDF 1.0, an open-source industry-supported PDF/A validator. Led by the Open Preservation Foundation and the PDF Association, veraPDF validates all parts and conformance levels of ISO 19005 (PDF/A). The software is available under a MPLv2+/GLPv3+ license.
Carl Wilson, Technical Lead, Open Preservation Foundation said: “Identifying a file’s format and establishing that it conforms to the format specification is an essential step for memory institutions with responsibilities for long term preservation and access. veraPDF helps users to evaluate their files against the standard. A PDF feature reporter and a customisable policy checker allows organisations to enforce institutional policy beyond the scope of PDF/A.”
Duff Johnson, Executive Director, PDF Association said: “The release of veraPDF 1.0 is a significant milestone for both the PDF industry and the digital preservation community. For the PDF industry, the project to develop veraPDF facilitated the identification and resolution of ambiguities in the PDF/A specification, improving interoperability and utility to end users. For the digital preservation community, veraPDF delivers authoritative information about the nature and long-term reliability of digital holdings while providing more tools to help preservationists advise contributors on their software and workflows.”
veraPDF now enters its contracted acceptance testing phase, which runs until July 2017. Users are encouraged to report any bugs or other concerns to the project’s GitHub issue tracker: https://github.com/veraPDF/veraPDF-library/issues.
Version 1.0 has the following enhancements and fixes as compared to the final beta release:
Application enhancements:
- fixed default values for extracted PDF features; and
- fixed removal of temporary files.
Conformance checker:
- fixed cmap table parsing in TrueType fonts.
Test corpus:
- changed metadata file provenance test files from FAIL to PASS (as resolved by the PDF Association’s PDF Validation Technical Working Group); and
- fixed xref table in test case 6-3-3-t01-pass-a.
Download veraPDF 1.0:
PDFBox version: http://downloads.verapdf.org/rel/verapdf-installer.zip
Greenfield version: http://downloads.verapdf.org/gf/verapdf-gf-installer.zip
Release notes:
https://github.com/veraPDF/veraPDF-library/releases/latest
Please help us improve the software by downloading and testing it. If you encounter problems, or wish to suggest improvements, please add them to the project’s GitHub issue tracker https://github.com/veraPDF/veraPDF-library/issues, or contact us through our mailing list: http://lists.verapdf.org/listinfo/users.
About
The veraPDF consortium is funded by the PREFORMA project. PREFORMA (PREservation FORMAts for culture information/e-archives) is a Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) project co-funded by the European Commission under its FP7-ICT Programme.
