PDF/A Support for BFOs Report Generator

Do you need to create PDF/A documents from XML? BFOs Report Generator can do just that.

Since the release of 1.1.47 the Report Generator can generate files in PDF/A-1b format. PDF/A documents are similar to standard PDFs, with a few added restrictions. They also meet the International Standard for long term archiving of electronic documents.

PDF/A documents must adhere to the following requirements:

  • All fonts must be embedded. This includes fonts in graphs, and fonts used as the markers in unordered lists (eg to draw the bullet)
  • An Output Intent must be specified and an ICC profile embedded - either RGB or CMYK
  • All colors must match this ICC profile - so if an sRGB profile is embedded, all colors in the PDF must be RGB. Transparency is not allowed
  • All images must match the embedded ICC profile, or the image must include an embedded ICC profile itself
  • Transparency is not allowed
  • JavaScript is not allowed

Converting a document that meets these requirements to PDF/A should be as simple as setting the output-profile meta-tag to “PDFA1b:2005”, then setting the output-intent-icc meta-tag to the URI of the ICC profile to embed and the output-intent-identifier meta-tag to the name of the profile. So, for example: