Adobe Seeks ISO Approved Status for PDF

Adobe Systems is planning to submit its PDF (Portable Document Format) specifications to the International Organisation for Standardisation for approval. This would give governments and large corporations increased confidence in the format.

Although subsets of the PDF format have already been standardised, the specification will now be updated in a more formal way through the standards organisation.

Adobe will give the specification, which is key to its PDF Reader and Acrobat products, to the industry group Enterprise Content Management Association (AIIM).

AIIM will form a working group and release the specification to ISO. ISO is expected to form a PDF standardization technical committee with representatives from businesses and customers, including governments.

The whole process is expected to take between one and three years.

Adobe plans to remain compatible with any PDF standards in its own products and existing PDF standards will also comply with any ISO standard.