Association | PDF-AKTUELL

Disastrous PDF/X-4 compatibility
with new Affinity Publisher

16. July 201911. July 2019 by Stephan Jaeggi

The final version 1.7.1 of Affinity Publisher has recently been released. In the media, this program has already been considered an InDesign killer. The feature overview is indeed very promising. Regarding PDF/X support, the following statement is made on the website:

«You can also open, edit and output PDF/X files.»

Two years ago this claim was already made for the vector graphics program Affinity Designer 1.4. Then I tested Affinity Designer 1.4 using the Ghent PDF Output Suite 5.0, the internationally recognized standard test for PDF/X compatibility. The result with Affinity Designer 1.4 was disappointing. I was curious to see if the new Affinity Publisher – a multi-page layout program where secure PDF import and export is even more important than for a vector graphics program – would now have better compatibility with PDF/X-4 files.

PDF Association publishes
«Tagged PDF Best Practice Guide»

27. June 201926. June 2019 by Stephan Jaeggi

The PDF Association has published a new guideline for the technically correct creation of accessible documents. The manual, entitled Tagged PDF Best Practice Guide: Syntax, is intended primarily for developers. It is intended to help developers understand the syntactic properties tagged PDFs need to meet accessibility requirements.

The guide is intended for interested parties who want to prepare accessible PDF documents in detail. On 70 pages, aspects such as PDF/UA as the standard for accessible PDF documents and general regulations are explained. In addition, developers and experienced users are provided with examples of the standard structure types and important information about attributes as well as properties, text features and other properties of PDF.

Public beta test of new GWG
preflight profiles for Display & Sign

11. July 201912. June 2019 by Stephan Jaeggi

In the Ghent Workgroup (GWG) we have recently developed a new specification for applications and preflight profiles for Display & Sign.

On the new landing page Display & Sign one can find the new specification and also beta versions of the preflight profiles for the Callas pdfToolbox and Enfocus PitStop Pro, which will be publicly tested in the next weeks. A whitepaper will follow later.

New web page for Compliancy
with Ghent PDF Output Suite 5

12. June 20196. June 2019 by Stephan Jaeggi

We have integrated the web page with the instructions for successfull output of the Ghent PDF Output Suite 5 into the web page on Ghent PDF Output Suite 5 Compliancy.

This allows a faster overview of the compliant products and the required settings for a successfull output.

These settings are not only valid for processing the PDFs of the Ghent PDF Output Suite but for all PDF/X-4 files in daily production!

Acrobat May 2019 Update
with PDF 2.0 and PDF Processing Steps

16. May 201915. May 2019 by Stephan Jaeggi

Adobe released planned updates for Acrobat DC and Acrobat 2017. As usual there are separate installers:

Acrobat 19.012.20034 for subscribers of the Document Cloud (Continuous Track)
Acrobat 17.011.30142 for users with a perpetual license of Acrobat 2017 (Classic Track)

The update can also be installed using the Acrobat menu Help > Check for Updates….

In addition to many improvements in the user interface (e.g. Review, Signatures, Reopen closed documents, Search, Commenting, Microsoft integration) there are finally also some interesting new features for print production in the preflight function: