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Adobe and Industry Standards

From PostScript® to Adobe® PDF, Adobe has a tradition of establishing, supporting, and promoting standards. That tradition continues with their commitment to building technology solutions that embrace industry standards and meet customer requirements.

Adobe is an active member of key standards bodies, working groups, and industry associations that develop standards—including XML-based industry standards. They contribute ongoing resources and publish, review, and share technology.

Adobe's best-known standard is PDF, a fine example of innovation through standards. PDF is everywhere. It is a published specification that has become the de facto worldwide standard for the reliable distribution and exchange of electronic documents.

As of January 2007, Adobe has been working with an ISO Technical Committee to submit PDF 1.7 to ISO for approval as a formal, open standard, named ISO 32000. ISO 32000 will be maintained and further developed by this technical committee with the objective of protecting the integrity and longevity of PDF. This will provide a formal, open standard for the more than 1 billion PDF files in existence today. Adobe supports, or will support, specific PDF versions that have been defined as open standards.

Innovating further, Adobe developed the Intelligent Document Platform. Based on PDF and XML technologies, it helps enterprise organizations convert static documents to Intelligent Documents and then integrate them with existing business processes.

Further Information

Creating PDF/E-ready files (PDF, 1.5M)
PDF/E, the ISO standard for the exchange of engineering and technical documentation (ISO 24517), has been ratified. Find out how to start creating PDF/E-ready files today from Acrobat 8.

Protecting electronic documents
Discover how persistent security policies and digital signature technology can help protect your Adobe PDF files.

PDF as a Solution for Pharmaceutical Electronic Submissions (PDF, 256K).
Find out how to speed time-to-market and contain costs by submitting information to regulatory agencies electronically.

PDF as a Standard for Managing and Archiving Documents and Forms (PDF, 63K).
Learn how organizations that adopt PDF as a standard can easily share, exchange, store, and retrieve documents.

PDF as a Standard for Archiving (PDF, 272K).
Read how the pairing of extensive tools and technology, along with a publicly available standard, makes PDF an ideal format for electronic archives.

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PDF/X for printing, an ISO standard (PDF, 59 KB)
PDF/A for archiving, an ISO standard (PDF, 272 KB)