Identification of PDF preservation risks with Apache Preflight: the sequel
Last winter I started a first attempt at identifying preservation risks in PDF files using the Apache Preflight PDF/A validator. This work was later followed up by others in two SPRUCE hackathons in Leeds (see this blog post by Peter Cliff) and London (described here). Much of this later work tacitly assumes that Apache Preflight is able to successfully identify features in PDF that are a potential risk for long-term access. This Wiki page on uses and abuses of Preflight (created as part of the final SPRUCE hackathon) even goes as far as stating that “Preflight is thorough and unforgiving (as it should be)”. But what evidence do we have to support such claims? The only evidence that I’m aware of, are the results obtained from a small test corpus of custom-created PDFs. Each PDF in this corpus was created in such a way that it includes only one specific feature that is a potential preservation risk (e.g. encryption, non-embedded fonts, and so on). However, PDFs that exist ‘in the wild’ are usually more complex. Also, the PDF specification often allows you to implement similar features in subtly different ways. For these reasons, it is essential to obtain additional evidence of Preflight’s ability to detect ‘risky’ features before relying on this tool in any operational setting.
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Apache-Preflight
- Why PDF/A validation matters, even if you don't have PDF/A - Part 2
- Identification of PDF preservation risks: analysis of Govdocs selected corpus
- Identification of PDF preservation risks with Apache Preflight: the sequel
- Identification of PDF preservation risks with Apache Preflight: a first impression
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PDF
- Escape from the phantom of the PDF
- VeraPDF parse status as a proxy for PDF rendering: experiments with the Synthetic PDF Testset
- Identification of PDF preservation risks with VeraPDF and JHOVE
- On The Significant Properties of Spreadsheets
- PDF processing and analysis with open-source tools
- Policy-based assessment with VeraPDF - a first impression
- PDF/A as a preferred, sustainable format for spreadsheets?
- Why PDF/A validation matters, even if you don't have PDF/A - Part 2
- Why PDF/A validation matters, even if you don't have PDF/A
- When (not) to migrate a PDF to PDF/A
- Identification of PDF preservation risks: analysis of Govdocs selected corpus
- Identification of PDF preservation risks with Apache Preflight: the sequel
- What do we mean by "embedded" files in PDF?
- Identification of PDF preservation risks with Apache Preflight: a first impression
- PDF – Inventory of long-term preservation risks