Adobe opens full PDF specification to ISO Standards Development

 
Jan 29, 2007

By Judith Dinowitz

Some of you may have seen the press release that went out today announcing Adobe's decision to release the full PDF standard through AIIM, the Enterprise Content Management Association, for the purpose of publication by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). I sat in on a press conference call hosted by Adobe to discuss the announcement.

Holly Campbell, Adobe's Director of Public Relations, started the call by providing a context for the announcement with an overview of Adobe's history. She stressed that Adobe has a history of being open with the PDF specification, though they have never before relinquished control of the full specification to an outside standards organization. In 1993, when Adobe released the PDF version 1 specification, they formally published the first full specification of the PDF. In the course of the intervening years, they have cooperated with the ISO to develop open specifications for specialized PDF formats. Two formats (PDF/A for digital archiving and PDF/X for Graphic Design Exchange) have already been declared formal ISO standards, and several more are in development.

At this point, over 2500 international companies have products or services that depend on the PDF standard. Adobe sees this move as the next logical step in the evolution of PDF from a de facto standard to a formal, de jure standard (Kevin Lynch, Senior Vice President and Chief Software Architect at Adobe).

Pam Deziel, Director of Product Marketing for the Platform business unit at Adobe, fielded questions on the topic. She was asked how things would work in the future for the development of PDF. Adobe will participate in the working group as a member, she said. She said that as Adobe had already published the full specification and has been working with ISO on specialized formats, they already understand some of the consequences of having an open specification.

Will Adobe do this for the SWF format as well? Deziel said that while Adobe has published the specification of the SWF format today, at this time, Adobe doesn't have plans to release the Flash file format to a standards body.

One member of the press inquired about the status of the specification for the Adobe Reader. Deziel said that the Reader specification was really based on the connection between the Adobe Reader and the application that produces the PDF it's reading. That's a piece that has not been published by Adobe, she said.

The conference call ended with this summary by Deziel: We think that this will enhance and preserve the flourishing ecosystem that lives around PDF. We don't have any thoughts of chilling competition at this time.

Judith Dinowitz is Editor-in-Chief of Fusion Authority, the House of Fusion Technical Magazine, and the Fusion Authority Quarterly Update. She is well known as the CFEditor, having worked on many articles and books for other publications.

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