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Creating PDF/A from LaTeX source and from existing PDF

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  Creating PDF/A from LaTeX source and from existing PDF Ceppo <ceppo@oziosi.org> - 2024-07-03 15:10 +0200
    Re: Creating PDF/A from LaTeX source and from existing PDF <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2024-07-03 15:40 +0200
      Re: Creating PDF/A from LaTeX source and from existing PDF Henning Follmann <hfollmann@itcfollmann.com> - 2024-07-03 17:10 +0200
        Re: Creating PDF/A from LaTeX source and from existing PDF <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2024-07-03 18:00 +0200
      Re: Creating PDF/A from LaTeX source and from existing PDF Ceppo <ceppo@oziosi.org> - 2024-07-08 19:30 +0200
    Re: Creating PDF/A from LaTeX source and from existing PDF Sarunas Burdulis <sarunas@math.dartmouth.edu> - 2024-07-03 16:20 +0200
      Re: Creating PDF/A from LaTeX source and from existing PDF Ceppo <ceppo@oziosi.org> - 2024-07-08 18:50 +0200
    Re: Creating PDF/A from LaTeX source and from existing PDF Henning Follmann <hfollmann@itcfollmann.com> - 2024-07-03 17:20 +0200
      Re: Creating PDF/A from LaTeX source and from existing PDF Ceppo <ceppo@oziosi.org> - 2024-07-08 20:20 +0200
    Re: Creating PDF/A from LaTeX source and from existing PDF Ceppo <ceppo@oziosi.org> - 2024-07-08 18:50 +0200
    Re: Creating PDF/A from LaTeX source and from existing PDF Jeffrey Walton <noloader@gmail.com> - 2024-07-08 23:30 +0200
      [SOLVED] Re: Creating PDF/A from LaTeX source and from existing PDF Ceppo <ceppo@oziosi.org> - 2024-07-10 10:40 +0200
        Re: [SOLVED] Re: Creating PDF/A from LaTeX source and from existing  PDF Max Nikulin <manikulin@gmail.com> - 2024-07-11 02:50 +0200

#270761 — Creating PDF/A from LaTeX source and from existing PDF

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I wrote a report with LaTeX, and afterwards discovered it must be
PDF/A-compliant - which wasn't. I found the pdfx LaTeX package and followed its
instructions, thus obtaining a file that should be PDF/A and pdfinfo identifies
as such, but my employer's upload form thinks isn't. Is pdfinfo reliable enough
that I can tell my employer his form is broken? If not, how can I make sure
that pdflatex's output is actually PDF/A-compliant?

I will also probably have to upload under the same requirement some third-party
PDF, which is not PDF/A, without access to an editable version. Is there a way
to convert them to PDF/A? I know that converting from an editable version would
be the correct way for this, but I have no real way to get it.

A requirement of any solution is that it doesn't rely on non-DFSG-compliant
software, including online conversion tools.

Thanks for any help.


--
Ceppo

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#270763

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On Wed, Jul 03, 2024 at 01:06:56PM +0000, Ceppo wrote:
> I wrote a report with LaTeX, and afterwards discovered it must be
> PDF/A-compliant - which wasn't. I found the pdfx LaTeX package and followed its
> instructions, thus obtaining a file that should be PDF/A and pdfinfo identifies
> as such, but my employer's upload form thinks isn't [...]

Uh-oh. We set the standards, but won't tell you what they are.

> Thanks for any help.

Not concrete help, but the Wikipedia [1] makes for an interesting
read (including refs to bunches of test suites you can throw at your
publisher's site to find out where their validator is failing).

And there seems to be a kind of semi-official validaror, according
to the above ref.

Cheers

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDF/A
-- 
t

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#270769

On Wed, Jul 03, 2024 at 03:36:17PM +0200, tomas@tuxteam.de wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 03, 2024 at 01:06:56PM +0000, Ceppo wrote:
> > I wrote a report with LaTeX, and afterwards discovered it must be
> > PDF/A-compliant - which wasn't. I found the pdfx LaTeX package and followed its
> > instructions, thus obtaining a file that should be PDF/A and pdfinfo identifies
> > as such, but my employer's upload form thinks isn't [...]
> 
> Uh-oh. We set the standards, but won't tell you what they are.

But they did! They say PDF/A. But you have a point that this maybe is
not enough. Which version of PDF/A are we talking about?

In general the policy is most likely a good one, because PDF/A gives you
certain guarantees (e.g. That the document renders consistently to the
same printed output, even years after archiving).

> 
> > Thanks for any help.
> 
> Not concrete help, but the Wikipedia [1] makes for an interesting
> read (including refs to bunches of test suites you can throw at your
> publisher's site to find out where their validator is failing).
> 
> And there seems to be a kind of semi-official validaror, according
> to the above ref.

I never tried to generate PDF/A from LaTeX but I am sure it is possible.
By default it would not include any javascript and IIRC it embeds the
font.

> 
> Cheers
> 
> [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDF/A
> -- 
> t



-- 
Henning Follmann           | hfollmann@itcfollmann.com

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#270773

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On Wed, Jul 03, 2024 at 11:05:59AM -0400, Henning Follmann wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 03, 2024 at 03:36:17PM +0200, tomas@tuxteam.de wrote:

[...]

> > Uh-oh. We set the standards, but won't tell you what they are.
> 
> But they did! They say PDF/A. But you have a point that this maybe is
> not enough. Which version of PDF/A are we talking about?

Don't get me wrong. The idea of PDF/A is great, the idea of using it
is too... but judging by the Wikipedia entry, the actual implementation
seems to be a mess, with several "levels", one semi-official validator
and a whole bunch of pairwise incompatible validators.

So just specifying PDF/A sounds like a sadistic torture coming out of
Catbert's Evil Human Resources Department :-)

Cheers
-- 
t

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#270935

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On Wed, Jul 03, 2024 at 03:36:17PM GMT, tomas@tuxteam.de wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 03, 2024 at 01:06:56PM +0000, Ceppo wrote:
> > I wrote a report with LaTeX, and afterwards discovered it must be
> > PDF/A-compliant - which wasn't. I found the pdfx LaTeX package and followed
> > its instructions, thus obtaining a file that should be PDF/A and pdfinfo
> > identifies as such, but my employer's upload form thinks isn't [...]
>
> Uh-oh. We set the standards, but won't tell you what they are.

Well, in fact they did tell - they just did *after* I produced my report. But
yes, the workflow is very broken...

> Not concrete help, but the Wikipedia [1] makes for an interesting
> read (including refs to bunches of test suites you can throw at your
> publisher's site to find out where their validator is failing).

I read about Isartor Test Suite, but [1] says it checks if the validator
accepts non-compliant files, not if it rejects compliant files.

> And there seems to be a kind of semi-official validaror, according
> to the above ref.

I guess you mean veraPDF?


[1]: https://pdfa.org/resource/isartor-test-suite/


--
Ceppo

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#270764

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On 7/3/24 09:06, Ceppo wrote:
> I wrote a report with LaTeX, and afterwards discovered it must be
> PDF/A-compliant - which wasn't. I found the pdfx LaTeX package and followed its
> instructions, thus obtaining a file that should be PDF/A and pdfinfo identifies
> as such, but my employer's upload form thinks isn't. Is pdfinfo reliable enough
> that I can tell my employer his form is broken? If not, how can I make sure
> that pdflatex's output is actually PDF/A-compliant?

pdfinfo probably only reads metadata, but does not do any PDF/A 
compliance validation.

VeraPDF seems to work for validation (https://verapdf.org/software/).

-- 
Sarunas Burdulis
Dartmouth Mathematics
math.dartmouth.edu/~sarunas

· https://useplaintext.email ·

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#270943

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On Wed, Jul 03, 2024 at 10:18:01AM GMT, Sarunas Burdulis wrote:
> pdfinfo probably only reads metadata, but does not do any PDF/A compliance
> validation.
>
> VeraPDF seems to work for validation (https://verapdf.org/software/).

I don't know about pdfinfo, but it looks like veraPDF at least agrees with my
contractor's form. Thanks for pointing me to it, it looks like now I have a
tool to check if my document is compliant.


--
Ceppo

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#270771

On Wed, Jul 03, 2024 at 01:06:56PM +0000, Ceppo wrote:
> I wrote a report with LaTeX, and afterwards discovered it must be
> PDF/A-compliant - which wasn't. I found the pdfx LaTeX package and followed its
> instructions, thus obtaining a file that should be PDF/A and pdfinfo identifies
> as such, but my employer's upload form thinks isn't. Is pdfinfo reliable enough
> that I can tell my employer his form is broken? If not, how can I make sure
> that pdflatex's output is actually PDF/A-compliant?
> 
> I will also probably have to upload under the same requirement some third-party
> PDF, which is not PDF/A, without access to an editable version. Is there a way
> to convert them to PDF/A? I know that converting from an editable version would
> be the correct way for this, but I have no real way to get it.
> 
> A requirement of any solution is that it doesn't rely on non-DFSG-compliant
> software, including online conversion tools.
> 
> Thanks for any help.
> 

I did research a bit. It is possible to create a PDF/A compliant
document from LaTeX. It looks like you have to do some work though.

Please looks at this thread at StackExchange. I found that to be very
helpful.
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/130201/pdf-a-with-hyperref-on-tex-live-2013/136653#136653

Please let me know how it works out for you.

-H


-- 
Henning Follmann           | hfollmann@itcfollmann.com

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#270946

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On Wed, Jul 03, 2024 at 11:15:51AM GMT, Henning Follmann wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 03, 2024 at 01:06:56PM +0000, Ceppo wrote:
> > A requirement of any solution is that it doesn't rely on non-DFSG-compliant
> > software, including online conversion tools.
>
> Please looks at this thread at StackExchange. I found that to be very
> helpful.
> https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/130201/pdf-a-with-hyperref-on-tex-live-2013/136653#136653
>
> Please let me know how it works out for you.

Hello.
Thanks for pointing to the thread, but the solution isn't suitable for me. I
need a solution that does not rely on non-DFSG-compliant software, but the
first step requires to use a file from a zip archive [1] with a license that
explicitly forbids to modify and sell it.


[1]: http://www.eci.org/_media/downloads/icc_profiles_from_eci/ecirgbv20.zip


--
Ceppo

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#270942

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On Wed, Jul 03, 2024 at 10:52:06PM GMT, yxcv@vienna.at wrote:
> Well, that is my way:

Thanks for providing your script. I tried it with one tweak:

> latex  .../Nix.tex  .../Nix.dvi
> dvips -o Nix.ps  Nix.pdf
                   ^^^^^^^
I guess here you meant Nix.dvi...

> ps2pdf ... Nix.ps ... Nix.pdf
> chmod 755 script
> All works since many many years absolutly perfect, nothing else ever was is
> needed

However, the resulting PDF is not recognized as PDF/A by veraPDF. Have you
tested it with something else?


--
Ceppo

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#270950

On Wed, Jul 3, 2024 at 12:13 PM Ceppo <ceppo@oziosi.org> wrote:
>
> I wrote a report with LaTeX, and afterwards discovered it must be
> PDF/A-compliant - which wasn't. I found the pdfx LaTeX package and followed its
> instructions, thus obtaining a file that should be PDF/A and pdfinfo identifies
> as such, but my employer's upload form thinks isn't. Is pdfinfo reliable enough
> that I can tell my employer his form is broken? If not, how can I make sure
> that pdflatex's output is actually PDF/A-compliant?

The pdf-linter I use to verify a pdf document is qpdf,
<https://github.com/qpdf/qpdf>. It is available on most distributions,
including Debian, Fedora and Red Hat.

The command to check the document is `qpdf --check <doc>`.

> I will also probably have to upload under the same requirement some third-party
> PDF, which is not PDF/A, without access to an editable version. Is there a way
> to convert them to PDF/A? I know that converting from an editable version would
> be the correct way for this, but I have no real way to get it.

qpdf may provide this functionality, but I have never used it. From
the project's description: "qpdf is a command-line tool and C++
library that performs content-preserving transformations on PDF files.
It supports linearization, encryption, and numerous other features. It
can also be used for splitting and merging files, creating PDF files
(but you have to supply all the content yourself), and inspecting
files for study or analysis."

Another tool I would look at is GhostScript. It looks like it can
convert to PDF/A: <https://stackoverflow.com/a/9343820>.

> A requirement of any solution is that it doesn't rely on non-DFSG-compliant
> software, including online conversion tools.

Jeff

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#270999 — [SOLVED] Re: Creating PDF/A from LaTeX source and from existing PDF

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On Mon, Jul 08, 2024 at 05:20:57PM GMT, Jeffrey Walton wrote:
> The pdf-linter I use to verify a pdf document is qpdf,
> <https://github.com/qpdf/qpdf>. It is available on most distributions,
> including Debian, Fedora and Red Hat.
>
> The command to check the document is `qpdf --check <doc>`.

This command doesn't show me any info abouy PDF/A compliance. man says it
"merely checks that the PDF file is syntactically valid".

> > I will also probably have to upload under the same requirement some
> > third-party PDF, which is not PDF/A, without access to an editable version.
> > Is there a way to convert them to PDF/A? I know that converting from an
> > editable version would be the correct way for this, but I have no real way
> > to get it.
>
> qpdf may provide this functionality, but I have never used it.

[1] says PDF/A conversion is out of scope for the library. However, [2] pointed
me to ocrmypdf and this command produces a valid PDF/A-1b file:

    ocrmypdf --output-type pdfa-1 --tesseract-timeout=0 --skip-text \
        input.pdf output.pdf

Another comment pointed out this relies on ghostscript, but I couldn't build a
working gs command. I will try harder as soon as I have some free time. Anyway
I have my conversion tool now, and I'm happy with it.

As a short summary of this thread outcome, I can:

- compile with `pdflatex` as usual
- convert to PDF/A with the `ocrmypdf` command above (probably not the most
  clean way, but it works)
- validate with veraPDF

Thanks everyone for your help, it was higly appreciated even when it didn't
work as expected!


[1]: https://github.com/qpdf/qpdf/issues/85
[2]: https://github.com/qpdf/qpdf/issues/85#issuecomment-1278055568


--
Ceppo

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#271060 — Re: [SOLVED] Re: Creating PDF/A from LaTeX source and from existing PDF

On 10/07/2024 15:37, Ceppo wrote:
> but I couldn't build a working gs command.
[...]
> [1]: https://github.com/qpdf/qpdf/issues/85

There is a link to gs arguments
<https://github.com/ocrmypdf/OCRmyPDF/blob/d9eb0ba7e/src/ocrmypdf/_exec/ghostscript.py#L199>

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