Adobe to Release PDF for Industry Standardization

PRESS RELEASE

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Jan. 29, 2007 — Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced that it intends to release the full Portable Document Format (PDF) 1.7 spec­i­fi­ca­tion to AIIM, the Enterprise Content Management Association, for the pur­pose of pub­li­ca­tion by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).

PDF has become a de fac­to glob­al stan­dard for more secure and depend­able infor­ma­tion exchange since Adobe pub­lished the com­plete PDF spec­i­fi­ca­tion in 1993. 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. Since 1995 Adobe has par­tic­i­pat­ed in var­i­ous work­ing groups that devel­op tech­ni­cal spec­i­fi­ca­tions for pub­li­ca­tion by ISO and worked with­in the ISO process to deliv­er spe­cial­ized sub­sets of PDF as stan­dards for spe­cif­ic indus­tries and func­tions. Today, PDF for Archive (PDF/A) and PDF for Exchange (PDF/X) are ISO stan­dards, and PDF for Engineering (PDF/E) and PDF for Universal Access (PDF/UA) are pro­posed stan­dards. Additionally, PDF for Healthcare (PDF/H) is an AIIM pro­posed Best Practice Guide. AIIM serves as the admin­is­tra­tor for PDF/A, PDF/E, PDF/UA and PDF/H.

“Today’s announce­ment is the next log­i­cal step in the evo­lu­tion of PDF from de fac­to stan­dard to a for­mal, de jure standard,” said Kevin Lynch, senior vice pres­i­dent and chief soft­ware archi­tect at Adobe. “By releas­ing the full PDF spec­i­fi­ca­tion for ISO stan­dard­iza­tion, we are rein­forc­ing our com­mit­ment to open­ness. As gov­ern­ments and orga­ni­za­tions increas­ing­ly request open for­mats, main­te­nance of the PDF spec­i­fi­ca­tion by an exter­nal and par­tic­i­pa­to­ry orga­ni­za­tion will help con­tin­ue to dri­ve inno­va­tion and expand the rich PDF ecosys­tem that has evolved over the past 15 years.”

Adobe will release the full PDF 1.7 spec­i­fi­ca­tion as defined in the PDF Reference Manual avail­able at www​.adobe​.com/​d​e​v​n​e​t​/​p​d​f​/​p​d​f​_​r​e​f​e​r​e​n​c​e.html to AIIM for the pur­pose of sub­mis­sion to ISO. The joint com­mit­tee formed under AIIM will iden­ti­fy issues to be addressed, as well as pro­posed solu­tions, and will devel­op a draft doc­u­ment that will then be pre­sent­ed to a Joint Working Group of ISO for devel­op­ment and approval as an International Standard. AIIM holds the sec­re­tari­at for the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) Technical Committee (TC) 171 and 171 SC2 for Document Management Applications, and is the admin­is­tra­tor for the U.S. Technical Advisory Group to ISO TC 171 that rep­re­sents the U.S. at inter­na­tion­al meetings.

“As the admin­is­tra­tor for sev­er­al spe­cial­ized ISO stan­dard sub­sets of PDF, AIIM is pleased to receive this pro­pos­al from Adobe,” said John Mancini, President, AIIM. “Over the last sev­er­al years we have seen and in many cas­es helped facil­i­tate a range of ongo­ing mar­ket and cus­tomer focused efforts around PDF. These efforts have grown so broad­ly that it now makes sense for Adobe to let the full spec­i­fi­ca­tion serve as a uni­fy­ing umbrel­la and sub­mit it for approval under the for­mal ISO stan­dards process.”

About AIIM
AIIM, the inter­na­tion­al author­i­ty on Enterprise Content Management (ECM), is lead­ing the way to the under­stand­ing, adop­tion and use of ECM tech­nolo­gies. These tech­nolo­gies, tools and meth­ods are used to cap­ture, man­age, store, pre­serve, and deliv­er con­tent across an enter­prise in sup­port of busi­ness process­es. As a non-profit asso­ci­a­tion for more than 60 years, AIIM pro­vides indus­try news and infor­ma­tion, edu­ca­tion­al events and pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment, mar­ket analy­sis, indus­try stan­dards devel­op­ment, pub­li­ca­tions, region­al chap­ters, and exec­u­tive net­work­ing. Complete infor­ma­tion about the AIIM, is avail­able on the Web at www​.aiim​.org .

About Adobe Systems Incorporated
Adobe rev­o­lu­tion­izes how the world engages with ideas and infor­ma­tion – any­time, any­where and through any medi­um. For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it www​.adobe​.com .