PDF-R2007-004, August Meeting Notes

 

PDF-R 2007-004

August 13, 2007

 

Draft Meeting Minutes

August 8, 2007

Conference Call Meeting

 

1. Introduction and Welcome

 

The meeting was called to order at 1:02 p.m. by Paul Showalter. The following participated in the conference call meeting of the U.S. Committee for ISO PDF Reference held on August 8, 2007:

 

Nora Calvillo                                                                  Adobe Systems

Jane Cohen                                                                   DTIC

Cherie Ekholm                                                               Microsoft

Betsy Fanning                                                               AIIM

Mark Gavin                                                                    Appligent

Duff Johnson                                                                  Document Solutions

Dave McAllister                                                              Adobe Systems

Jim King                                                                        Adobe Systems

Dennis Newman                                                 PFS Corporation

Leonard Rosenthol                                                         Adobe Systems

Paul Showalter                                                              IRS

Jo Terri Wright                                                               Bentley

 

2. Approval of the Agenda for the August 8, 2007 Conference Call meeting

 

The agenda (PDF-R 2007-003) for the August 8, 2007 conference call meeting was approved as presented. (Newman/Wright)

 

3. Approval of the Draft Meeting Minutes for the July 16-17, 2007 Meeting

 

The draft meeting minutes (PDF-R 2007-002) for the July 16-17, 2007 meeting were approved as presented. (Cohen/Calvillo)

 

4. Review Action Items

 

The action items, as posted on the wiki, were reviewed.

 

5. Status on the Review and Discussion on Comments to date

 

The committee began reviewing the comments submitted by Mark Gavin. A general observation from Mark is that in some cases the standard is less restrictive. It is important that US committee members review the document sufficiently to be able to sign off on the US statement to the other member countries describing the likeness of ISO/DIS 32000 to PDF Reference 1.7 published by Adobe.

 

The following comments were discussed:

 

7.5.2 Paragraph 5 - this is a new restriction from the PDF Reference that was included as it is believed that this is common practice and is needed to ensure compatibility with PDF/A and PDF/E files.

 

7.5.3 Clarification of text without changing the text

 

7.5.4 Clarification of text without changing the text

 

7.5.5 New restriction for no bytes and no EOL characters that is not in PDF 1.7; the other comments for this section are clarifications. Table 14 was required but PDF 1.7 did not clearly state it and it was felt that clarification was needed.

 

7.5.6 This is less restrictive in that one could change the document without updating it but this would be problematic for digital signatures

 

7.5.7 Bullets 6 and 7 - clarifications to what is in PDF 1.7

 

The committee decided to focus on the comments that are of major concern as follows:

 

7.6.1, Paragraph 1, a 'shall' was added making this a requirement.

 

7.6.3.2, Table 21 - several bit positions were deleted from the table that could cause incorrect things to happen. They may have been removed as some files may not use them and the ISO version was attempting to document the way the majority of the files were constructed.

 

7.6.3.2, paragraph 4 - this was added to clarify the control of the bits.

 

7.6.4.2, Table 22 - R and P integer keyes were added as well as a paragraph.

 

It is noted that all addendums to PDF 1.7 were incorporated into the ISO version of the standard which may help to explain the variations on the two documents. For example, Appendix H information that was not Adobe product specific was included in the draft.

 

7.7.3.3 It is believed that it is better to use an empty/null stream rather than an empty array. Additionally, it was desirable to move away from arrays.

 

7.9.4 It is noted that date streams were optional and are now required.

 

7.10.2 A weakness of the PDF reference was that there were no definitions so byte was defined in the ISO version and changed accordingly throughout the document.

 

7.11.3, Table 43 This is an example of what happened taking PDF 1.7 and making it into an ISO standard following the ISO format and rules.

 

8.6.5.5 The PDF reference was to cover all previous versions of PDF. The PDF viewers were more accommodating to cover older versions' capabilities. When the ISO draft was being created, a goal was to cover only the current capabilities. It was also desirable to ensure that users saw correct colors used in documents.

 

It was noted that the support statement may need to be revised. It may be beneficial to include the three legged stool example in the statement. The ISO draft is better at describing PDF than PDF 1.7 was. It is less ambiguous and with less errors than PDF 1.7. We need to convince the other member countries that the ISO document is technically equivalent but with some differences.

 

6. Update Action Items/Review Assignments

 

No new action items were added. All meeting participants were reminded to be reviewing ISO/DIS 32000 so that they will be able to make a clear decision regarding the statement the US is proposing to send to the other member countries regarding the equivalency of the DIS to the published PDF Reference.

 

AIIM and Nora Calvillo will work on the statement and provide a copy of the revised statement to the committee for review prior to the conference call in September. 

 

7. Adjournment

 

The meeting was adjourned at 2:16 p.m. (Cohen/Wright)