Generating PDF/A-1b compliant documents using pdfx and pdfLaTeX

Question

There are several discussions on the web on how to generate PDF/A-1b compliant documents.

One approach can be found on http://support.river-valley.com/wiki/index.php?title=Generating_PDF/A_compliant_PDFs_from_pdftex which is implemented as far as I can see in the pdfx package.

I created a minimal test.tex file:

\documentclass{article} 
\usepackage[a-1b]{pdfx} 
\begin{document} 
Hello, world! 
\end{document}

From what I understand, I need to place metadata in a separate file called test.xmpdata:

\Title{PDF/A-Compliance}
\Author{Ada Lovelace}
\Org{TeX University}
\Keywords{PDF/A}

I compile test.tex using pdfTeX 3.1415926-1.40.10-2.2 (TeX Live 2009/Debian).

For validation of PDF/A-1b compliancy, I use jhove and a PDF export from LibreOffice as a positive control.

jhove -m pdf-hul test.pdf

However, jhove laments

ErrorMessage: Lexical error
  Offset: 16530

So my test.pdf file does not seem to be PDF/A compliant. Could you please give me hints on additional diagnostics to run in order to pin down the problem?

Interestingly, Adobe's Acrobat Reader shows a hint that the generated document would be PDF/A compliant. So maybe this is just a jhove problem. Could maybe someone who possesses Adobe's Acrobat Professional use the Preflight functionality to validate this? But at least pdfinfo test.pdf isn't showing the correct metadata either. — Penguin Nurse, Nov 01 '12 at 10:57
See also pdf/a: Width information for rendered glyphs is inconsistent — sebschub, Nov 01 '12 at 13:41
Thanks a lot for your comments so far, but they didn't help me to solve the problem. The thread on width information for rendered glyphs might become important for me if I start using math fonts. — Penguin Nurse, Nov 01 '12 at 19:28
The pdfx CTAN package ships with the file small2e.pdf which shall presumably be PDF/A compliant. However, jhove tells me that this file is also not well formatted, because it contains a lexical error. Nevertheless, Adobe's Acrobat Reader shows a message claiming this file is viewed in PDF/A mode. Once again, if anyone of you has got a version of Adobe's Acrobat Professional, it would be interesting to see its Preflight comments on this file. — Penguin Nurse, Nov 01 '12 at 20:01
@PenguinNurse According to Acrobat X Pro's Preflight, small2e.pdf is not a valid PDF/A-1b. You can find a summary here. — sebschub, Nov 14 '12 at 09:30
@sebschub I would have interpreted "All problems according to Preflight profile Verify compliance with PDF/A-1b" that the file is verified to be complicent. — Jörg, Dec 05 '12 at 15:26
@Jörg The errors are listed on the first page. I suppose that nothing is marked on the second page because the errors cannot be pointed to a visible spot in the document. — sebschub, Dec 06 '12 at 13:43
I would like to add that since the OP mentions the instructions contained at http://support.river-valley.com/wiki/index.php?title=Generating_PDF/A_compliant_PDFs_from_pdftex, it is important to note that the file pdfa-1b.xmp used by pdfx.sty (and contained in its directory) is different from the file pdfa-1b.xmp used in the instructions at river-valley.com. For example, the file pdfa-1b.xmp in the directory pdfx.sty makes use of the macro \xmpKeywords while the file pdfa-1b.xmp — Matthew McGonagle, Jul 03 '14 at 15:53

user26372 · Accepted Answer · 2022-02-05T07:38:48.480

8

See updated solution

https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/535849/50129

OUTDATED

Generating PDFA-1b compliant documents is not possible with the default pdftex. There is a minor bug in pdftex resulting in non-compliant EOL markers. There is a bug report from 2011 about this problem which successfully resolves the issue. You can find it here:

http://sarovar.org/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=4341&group_id=106&atid=493

There is also a file attached to this report: http://sarovar.org/tracker/download.php/106/493/4341/10821/verify_this_sample.zip

It contains instructions on how to patch pdftex to generate PDFA-1b compatible files. The package also contains a patched version of pdfx. Unfortunately, these changes did not made it into the code base yet.

edited Feb 05 '22 at 07:38

answered Feb 24 '13 at 12:10

user26372

1,706

2

This is fixed in the latest Tex Live source! See svn repo and mailing list. – Florian Bw Dec 17 '13 at 16:43
1

It seems that the link is not longer working.... – Peter Ebelsberger Feb 12 '15 at 16:02
This answer used to be correct at time of writing but it is completely wrong as of today. How to handle this? Flag down, delete or create a new answer? The problem is a high pagerank. For answers see here. – tanGIS Jun 19 '20 at 19:10

score 5 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 14 '12 at 20:45

5

I had to validate a document through jhove, and I managed to do it using pdftk on the PDF that was produced by pdflatex. I simply used the command

pdftk MyDocument.pdf output ValidatedDocument.pdf

I hope it can help you!

answered Nov 14 '12 at 20:45

Bruno

1,975

1

Well, it would of course nice to create a compliant document directly from TeX or LaTeX. But the good thing about your solution is that it doesn't require proprietary software. – Penguin Nurse Jan 06 '13 at 14:52
I totally agree (on both points!). – Bruno Jan 06 '13 at 18:06
4

-1! This answer is misleading and thus, plain wrong! In no way does pdftk convert a non-PDF/A document into a PDF/A, nor does it really validate a PDF/A document. There is not even a hint in the pdftk documentation which suggests so. – Kurt Pfeifle Sep 17 '14 at 16:14
1

I am sorry if this answer is misleading. Yet, I really used pdftk to produce a PDF file which was "validated" by jhove as I wrote. I am not sure the resulting PDF is a PDF/A, simply that it passed jhove tests so that my grad school accepted it. – Bruno Sep 18 '14 at 07:43

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Dec 25 '22 at 00:11

I don't know if this is a right answer to the question, but it might help someone who wants to generate a PDF/A (especially the 1b version for archives) from a LaTeX project.

I tried the pdfx package, even though it helps to reduce the number of validation errors, veraPDF sill complaining about so many others. The problem is LaTeX alone cannot check all the requirements (for example the transparency of the graphics).

After some research I found that Ghostscript can be used to convert a PDF to PDF/A (see this thread), but the validation was not always successful as well. Some versions does not even work. Sometimes it works but the resulting PDF will have some issues (for example links does not work, metadata are removed, etc).

The idea then is to use the pdfx package, compile the project using pdfLaTeX then run Ghostscript on the resulting PDF and use a program like ExifTool to fix the metadata issue. This gave me good results (at least on my LaTeX thesis).

I wrote a simple script to automate the above process. Although I am not sure if it will work for every LaTeX project, but I hope it will help someone in the same situation. The installation process as well as the source code are hosted on github: latex2pdfa

Thank you so much, this script is a pleasure to use, and worked flawlessly in my case. — Clément, Dec 01 '23 at 18:56

Generating PDF/A-1b compliant documents using pdfx and pdfLaTeX

3 Answers3

See updated solution

OUTDATED

Linked