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Has anyone succeeded in creating PDF/A-2a output ?

Advocate ,
Jul 23, 2022 Jul 23, 2022

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Many government organisations require PDF/A-2a nowadays but the available PDF job options in FrameMaker do not support this. As you can add your own job options to the list of available ones, I was wondering if anyone has tried (and succeeded) in creating this type of PDF ?

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PDF output , Publishing

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Community Expert ,
Jul 24, 2022 Jul 24, 2022

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What version of FM?

I was able to generate a PDF/A-2b document in the recent past, but had to use FM2020 to do it, as FM2019 did not have the option, and would not recognize the FM2020 job option for it.

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Advocate ,
Jul 24, 2022 Jul 24, 2022

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I have seen the PDF/A-2b job options. Looking for PDF/A-2a. There is quite a lot of variety in those standards, it seems. And there is no way I am going to get governmental bodies to adopt something other than they have decided for. They are about as flexible as a concrete wall.

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Community Expert ,
Jul 25, 2022 Jul 25, 2022

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PDF/A-2a doesn't appear in the newer JOs found in:
C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe FrameMaker 2020\PDFStandardizer\Resource\Additional_PDF_Settings

If Acrobat Pro is available, how about:

  1.  Publish to PDF as PDF/A-2b
  2.  Open in Acrobat
  3.  (Enable Editing)
  4.  Â» Tools » PDF Standards » Save as PDF/A
  5.  [Settings]
  6.  â¦¿ Save as PDF/A-2a
  7.  {and you'll need to configure several options/corrections, it appears} …and on a PDF/A-2b I tried it on using defaults, it took a while, inflated the file size, and threw an unable error that I haven't chased down.

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Advocate ,
Jul 25, 2022 Jul 25, 2022

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Hello Bob,

I am using the Acrobat Pro route, but that involves another component and manual application of the changes. I am looking for a way to automate the process and even though there is scripting for Acrobat Pro, I would rather keep everything within one environment. If Acrobat Pro can create PDF/A-2a I do not see real reasons why FM would not be able to do this as well. I guess I will have to call a meeting with the dev team.

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Community Expert ,
Jul 25, 2022 Jul 25, 2022

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PDF/A-#b level is something that can be largely or entirely assured by Publish, as it specifies visual appearance.

PDF/A-#a level imposes semantics: tagging, structure tree, language ID, alt-text, and Unicode.

So "a"-level is mostly authoring work, but even if FM supports all the tagging needed (and I'm not sure it does), it may not be possible today for FM to credibly generate a PDF/A-2a (or -2u), due to that Unicode requirement.

FM versions to date lack full Unicode support. FM8…FM2020 support covers only Unicode BMP (U+0000…U+FFFF), which is just 38% of code points so far assigned in the standard. The Supplementary Planes, U+10000… and up, do not yet work (Tracker: FRMAKER-10976).

 

My PDF/A-2b to 2a experiment may have failed in part due to the document containing legacy overlay font use, precisely because FM didn't support some SMP characters I needed, the Creative Commons license symbols in the U+1F16D…10F range.

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Advocate ,
Jul 25, 2022 Jul 25, 2022

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Thanks for the detailed information. The creation of PDF/A-2a in Acrobat Pro did not give any problems, as we make sure the FM PDF output is tagged (and the source is structured to start with). It is a shame that, even though the path to this PDF format is known (including the requirements), there is not even a chance to generate it. It should give the option and return an error if the requirements cannot be met. But I guess I need to get into Adobe Acrobat Pro scripting.

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Community Expert ,
Jul 25, 2022 Jul 25, 2022

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re: It should give the option and return an error if the requirements cannot be met.

So it would seem. It would be pretty straightforward to scan the document for UTF-8 sequences above
0xEF 0xBF 0xBD (the highest assigned BMP char)

But something odd seems to be afoot with FM support for Unicode SPs. FM's CharPallete lets you pick and enter them. They can be entered and stored in .fm and .mif file structure. They just don't render (instead show up as "?"). I suspect that when anyone in R&D opens this can of worms for any reason, they find some reason to close it and work on some other issue.

The new JobOpts that appeared with FM2020 are also peculiar. They can't be editted in PrintSetup (throw a Could not open" error). The actual JO file seems to contain a bunch of binary, suggesting that it may not be just a list of parameters, but may contain some executable code, that the calling app needs to know how to invoke (and could be why these new JOs don't work in FM2019 or earlier).

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Advocate ,
Jul 25, 2022 Jul 25, 2022

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It is high time for me to get a call with the dev team, then. PDF/A-2a is being requested by pretty important potential customers (such as the European Union's Publication Office).

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