veraPDF 1.8 released

The latest version of veraPDF is now available to download. This release includes new PDF information in the features report and automatic configuration of the features extractor when applying custom policy profiles. There are also a number of low level PDF fixes and improvements which are documented in the latest release notes: https://github.com/veraPDF/veraPDF-library/releases/latest

This is the final release of veraPDF under the PREFORMA project. From September, veraPDF will make the transition from a funded project to a stand alone open source project.

Download veraPDF

http://downloads.verapdf.org/rel/verapdf-installer.zip

Help improve veraPDF

Most of the changes in this release are in response to the constructive feedback we’ve received from our users. Testing and user feedback is key to improving the software. Please download and use the latest release. If you experience problems, or wish to suggest improvements, please add them to the project’s GitHub issue tracker: https://github.com/veraPDF/veraPDF-library/issues  or post them to our user mailing list: http://lists.verapdf.org/listinfo/users.

Getting started

User guides and documentation are published at: http://docs.verapdf.org.

Save the date!

Join us for our next webinar on 19 September ‘Life after PREFORMA, the future of veraPDF’. Registration opening soon.

veraPDF 1.6 released

The latest release of veraPDF is available to download. The validation logic and test corpus of veraPDF 1.6 have been updated to comply with the resolutions of the PDF Association’s PDF Validation Technical Working Group (TWG). The TWG brings together PDF technology experts to analyse PDF validation issues in a transparent way. It also connects veraPDF to the ISO committee responsible for PDF/A.

The GUI and command line applications feature a new update checker which lets you know if you are running the latest version of the software. If you’re using the GUI application select “Help->Check for updates”, command line users type “verapdf –version -v” to ensure you have the latest features and fixes.

Other fixes and improvements are documented in the release notes: https://github.com/veraPDF/veraPDF-library/releases/latest

Download veraPDF

http://downloads.verapdf.org/rel/verapdf-installer.zip

Help improve veraPDF

Testing and user feedback is key to improving the software. Please download and use the latest release. If you experience problems, or wish to suggest improvements, please add them to the project’s GitHub issue tracker: https://github.com/veraPDF/veraPDF-library/issues  or contact us through our mailing list: http://lists.verapdf.org/listinfo/users.

User guides and documentation are published at: http://docs.verapdf.org/.

PREFORMA International Conference  – Shaping our future memory standards

To find out more about veraPDF and the PREFORMA project, join us at the PREFORMA International Conference in Tallinn on 11-12 October 2017. For more information see: http://finalconference.preforma-project.eu/.

veraPDF Short Course at Archiving 2017 Conference

Sign up for the ‘PDF/A Challenges and Validation Tools’ Short Course by veraPDF at the IS&T Archiving Conference on Monday 15 May in Riga, Latvia.

The course comprises presentations and practical demonstrations that provide an introduction to the PDF/A format, its applications, and how institutions can use veraPDF software in their PDF/A workflows. Limited places are available. Register now to secure your place.

PDF/A Challenges and Validation Tools

Monday 15 May 13:30 – 15:30

Instructors: Carl Wilson, Open Preservation Foundation, and Boris Doubrov, Dual Lab

The course comprises presentations and practical demonstrations that provide an introduction to the PDF/A format, its applications, and how institutions can use veraPDF software in their PDF/A workflows.

The course begins with an introduction to the PDF format, the PDF/A standards, and PDF/A validation. This is followed by an investigation of some of the common issues encountered when validating PDF/A documents. These are explored through demonstrations using the veraPDF software to process PDF documents. The class demonstrates how the veraPDF toolkit can be used to validate PDF/A documents and report the results and look at the results of the validation process and help participants to understand the preservation risks associated with some particular issues. The course also covers problems that might be encountered in using PDF/A and associated legal aspects.

Participants should bring their laptops for the demos/exercise.

Benefits
This course enables the attendee to:

  • Understand what PDF/A is and is not.​
  • Appreciate different PDF/A versions (1, 2 and 3) and conformance levels (a, b, and u).
  • Learn the choices presented by the variety of PDF/A flavours helping them to make the right decisions.
  • Learn common areas of concern: fonts, colors, metadata, images, etc.
  • Understand some practical aspects of PDF/A compliance and the associated preservation risks and the open source veraPDF tool set and its uses.

Intended Audience: Archivists, librarians, curators and other people working at memory institutions and in other institutions that need to store and preserve digital files, digital preservationists, IT researchers, open source software developers, people working in standardization organizations, and policy makers.

About Archiving 2017

The IS&T Archiving Conference brings together an international community of imaging experts and technicians as well as curators, managers, and researchers from libraries, archives, museums, records management repositories, information technology institutions, and commercial enterprises to explore and discuss the field of digitization of cultural heritage and archiving. The conference presents the latest research results on digitization and curation, provides a forum to explore new strategies and policies, and reports on successful projects that can serve as benchmarks in the field. Archiving 2017 is a blend of short courses, keynote talks, peer-reviewed oral and interactive (poster) presentations, an exhibit, and social events offering attendees a unique opportunity for gaining and exchanging knowledge and building networks among professionals.

To find out more about the conference, short courses and to register visit: http://www.imaging.org/site/IST/Conferences/Archiving/IST/Conferences/Archiving/Archiving_Home.aspx.

veraPDF 1.4 released

We are pleased to announce that the new release of veraPDF is available. veraPDF 1.4 has a new GUI wizard for creating custom policy files. Significant performance optimisations have been made to the greenfield PDF parser.

Other fixes and improvements are documented in the release notes: https://github.com/veraPDF/veraPDF-library/releases/latest

Download veraPDF

The greenfield version is available here, and is now our default download option: http://downloads.verapdf.org/rel/verapdf-installer.zip

Help improve veraPDF

Testing and user feedback is key to improving the software. Please download and use the latest release. If you encounter problems, or wish to suggest improvements, please add them to the project’s GitHub issue tracker: https://github.com/veraPDF/veraPDF-library/issues  or contact us through our mailing list: http://lists.verapdf.org/listinfo/users.

User guides and documentation can be found at: http://docs.verapdf.org/.

veraPDF policy checking webinar, 30 March

Join us for our next webinar exploring the veraPDF policy checker

The veraPDF software is capable of more than just PDF/A validation. veraPDF also provides a policy checker capable of carrying out custom PDF document checks beyond the scope of PDF/A validation. Examples of custom checks include highlighting the use of particular fonts or image formats, enforcing population of metadata fields or limiting the number of pages in a document. In this webinar we’ll be:

  • Giving a demonstration of the policy checker.
  • Providing a brief, non-technical overview of the supporting technologies: XML Schematron, XPath and XQuery.
  • Helping you to get started with the policy checker, showing how to report issues and get help.

Finally, we will be outlining our future development plans for the policy checker, and we’ll wrap up with a question and answer session.

To read more about veraPDF policy checking, see the documentation page: http://docs.verapdf.org/policy/

Session Leads:

  • Carl Wilson, Open Preservation Foundation
  • Boris Doubrov, Dual Lab

The webinar takes place on Thursday 30 March at 14:00 BST / 15:00 CEST and will last approximately one hour. There are 50 place available that will be allocated on a first come, first served basis.

Registration:

Please register at: https://openpreservation.clickmeeting.com/verapdf-policy-checking/register.

veraPDF 1.2 released

The latest version of veraPDF is now available. This release is the first of the PREFORMA testing phase.The release is focused on bug fixing and improvements of the test infrastructure:

Conformance checker

  • fixed cache issues in parsing embedded CMaps
  • fixed multiple issues with validation of font subsets
  • fixed delimiter handling in parsing content streams
  • ignore None colorants when checking DeviceN color spaces
  • fixed validation of Order arrays in optional content groups

Policy checker

  • fixed plug-in infrastructure
  • fixed handling of unknown feature types
  • added error info into HTML reports in case of broken PDFs

Documentation

  • updated developer samples
  • updated GUI documentation

Download veraPDF

PDFBox version: http://downloads.verapdf.org/rel/verapdf-installer.zip
Greenfield version: http://downloads.verapdf.org/gf/verapdf-gf-installer.zip

Release notes

The latest release notes are published at: https://github.com/veraPDF/veraPDF-library/releases/latest

Help improve veraPDF

Testing and user feedback is key to improving the software. Please download and test the latest release. If you encounter problems, or wish to suggest improvements, please add them to the project’s GitHub issue tracker: https://github.com/veraPDF/veraPDF-library/issues,  or contact us through our mailing list: http://lists.verapdf.org/listinfo/users.

To help you get started, we have published user guides and documentation at: http://docs.verapdf.org/.

veraPDF awarded PREFORMA testing phase

veraPDF has successfully completed the prototyping phase in the PREFORMA project and has been awarded the contract for the six month testing phase.

veraPDF is an open-source industry-supported PDF/A validator. Led by the Open Preservation Foundation and the PDF Association, veraPDF validates all parts and conformance levels of ISO 19005 (PDF/A).

The testing phase will focus on five key areas:

  • Acceptance testing with the PREFORMA consortium, automating the testing process and the reporting of results;
  • Identifying any issues with the veraPDF corpora, such as ambiguities or omissions, and working with the PDF Association Technical Working Group to resolve the issues and supply additional files;
  • Fixing bugs, optimising performance, and reviewing feature and enhancement requests to produce a product roadmap;
  • Improving documentation, and continuing work on the veraPDF validation rule wiki to provides contextual information about errors raised: https://github.com/veraPDF/veraPDF-validation-profiles/wiki/PDFA-Part-1-rules;
  • Community building, outreach and training.

Download veraPDF

veraPDF 1.0 was released in January 2017. Download the software at:

Release notes: https://github.com/veraPDF/veraPDF-library/releases/latest

Getting started

User guides and documentation are available at: http://docs.verapdf.org/.

If you encounter problems, or wish to suggest improvements, please add them to the project’s GitHub issue tracker: https://github.com/veraPDF/veraPDF-library/issues, or contact us through our mailing list: http://lists.verapdf.org/listinfo/users.

PREFORMA Innovation Workshop, 7 March, Padova

To find out more about PREFORMA and the three conformance checkers, sign up for the PREFORMA Innovation workshop: http://www.preforma-project.eu/workshop-in-padua.html.  The aim of the workshop is to highlight the importance of standardisation and file format validation for the long term preservation of digital cultural content, and the business models that can be built around them. Registration closes 3 March.

About

The veraPDF consortium is funded by the PREFORMA project. PREFORMA (PREservation FORMAts for culture information/e-archives) is a Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) project co-funded by the European Commission under its FP7-ICT Programme. The project’s main aim is to address the challenge of implementing standardised file formats for preserving digital objects in the long term, giving memory institutions full control over the acceptance and management of preservation files into digital repositories.

veraPDF 1.0 released

The veraPDF consortium today announced the release of veraPDF 1.0, an open-source industry-supported PDF/A validator. Led by the Open Preservation Foundation and the PDF Association, veraPDF validates all parts and conformance levels of ISO 19005 (PDF/A). The software is available under a MPLv2+/GLPv3+ license.

Carl Wilson, Technical Lead, Open Preservation Foundation said: “Identifying a file’s format and establishing that it conforms to the format specification is an essential step for memory institutions with responsibilities for long term preservation and access. veraPDF helps users to evaluate their files against the standard. A PDF feature reporter and a customisable policy checker allows organisations to enforce institutional policy beyond the scope of PDF/A.”

Duff Johnson, Executive Director, PDF Association said: “The release of veraPDF 1.0 is a significant milestone for both the PDF industry and the digital preservation community. For the PDF industry, the project to develop veraPDF facilitated the identification and resolution of ambiguities in the PDF/A specification, improving interoperability and utility to end users. For the digital preservation community, veraPDF delivers authoritative information about the nature and long-term reliability of digital holdings while providing more tools to help preservationists advise contributors on their software and workflows.”

veraPDF now enters its contracted acceptance testing phase, which runs until July 2017. Users are encouraged to report any bugs or other concerns to the project’s GitHub issue tracker: https://github.com/veraPDF/veraPDF-library/issues.

Version 1.0 has the following enhancements and fixes as compared to the final beta release:

Application enhancements:

  • fixed default values for extracted PDF features; and
  • fixed removal of temporary files.

Conformance checker:

  • fixed cmap table parsing in TrueType fonts.

Test corpus:

  • changed metadata file provenance test files from FAIL to PASS (as resolved by the PDF Association’s PDF Validation Technical Working Group); and
  • fixed xref table in test case 6-3-3-t01-pass-a.

Download veraPDF 1.0:

PDFBox version: http://downloads.verapdf.org/rel/verapdf-installer.zip

Greenfield version: http://downloads.verapdf.org/gf/verapdf-gf-installer.zip

Release notes:

https://github.com/veraPDF/veraPDF-library/releases/latest

Please help us improve the software by downloading and testing it. If you encounter problems, or wish to suggest improvements, please add them to the project’s GitHub issue tracker https://github.com/veraPDF/veraPDF-library/issues, or contact us through our mailing list: http://lists.verapdf.org/listinfo/users.

About

The veraPDF consortium is funded by the PREFORMA project. PREFORMA (PREservation FORMAts for culture information/e-archives) is a Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) project co-funded by the European Commission under its FP7-ICT Programme.

veraPDF 0.28 released

The latest version of veraPDF is now available to download. This is the final version before our version 1.0 release on January 9th 2017 making it an effective release candidate. New features include the schematron based policy checker and a fully functional greenfield implementation. For the upcoming version 1.0 we’ll be:

  • performing software fixes in response to issues raised on GitHub: https://github.com/veraPDF/veraPDF-library/issues;
  • reviewing the API and adding JavaDoc for remaining public methods;
  • improving our documentation; and
  • making changes to our test and build systems.

The full list of changes listed in the release notes is:

Application Enhancements

  • schematron based policy checker implementation:
  • greenfield implementation of feature extraction;
  • greenfield implementation of metadata fixer;
  • GUI now supports checking multiple files or a directory;
  • HTML summary report for multiple file results;
  • single file detailed report containing policy and feature information; and
  • stability improvements and performance optimization of the greenfield parser.

Conformance checker

  • fixed glyph width checks in case of exactly 1/1000 point difference;
  • fixed default color space processing for Indexed color spaces;
  • fixed Order array support for OCG checks in PDF/A-2; and
  • fixed Unicode character maps support for PDF/A-1 Level A.

Download veraPDF 0.28:

PDFBox version: http://downloads.verapdf.org/rel/verapdf-installer.zip

Greenfield version: http://downloads.verapdf.org/gf/verapdf-gf-installer.zip

Release notes:

https://github.com/veraPDF/veraPDF-library/releases/latest

About veraPDF

veraPDF is building an open source, industry-supported PDF/A validator. Please help us improve the software by downloading and testing it. If you encounter problems, or wish to suggest improvements, please add them to the project’s GitHub issue tracker https://github.com/veraPDF/veraPDF-library/issues, or contact us through our mailing list (http://lists.verapdf.org/listinfo/users).