At CAAUK last week there was some discussion of Adobe PDF files being used to archive and disseminate information, and the dangers of using what is still a proprietary format. It looks like that’s about to change.
Whilst going through my RSS feeds this morning, a story on TechCrunch stood out. Adobe are going to relinquish “control over the PDF format to AIIM, the Enterprise Content Management Association, for the purpose of publication by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO)”.
Both government and private industry have come to rely on PDF for the volumes of electronic records that need to be more securely and reliably shared, managed, and in some cases preserved for generations.
This looks very promising for those of us concerned with the archiving of digital data. PDF is a good way of preserving the original layout of a report, and doesn’t require the end user to have a copy of Microsoft Office, or to download the behemoth that is OpenOffice.org (even though that is a good idea!).
Read the full details in Adobe’s press release.
