How can I test a PDF document if it is PDF/A compliant?

Horcrux7 almost 4 years

We write a software that create PDF files. How we can check if the resulting pdf files are PDF/A compatible? Are there any test suite for it available?
Horcrux7 over 14 years

This is wrong. The Reader show only if the PDF/A signature is available. Not if it is a valid PDF/A file.
Shervin Asgari over 14 years

Oh I see. I did not know that.
Goran Rakic almost 13 years

This one is open source github.com/gba-awl/padaf
Sundypha almost 12 years

@Horcrux7 can you site your sources for this? How do you know this? I have used a few API's that generate PDF/A and non PDF/A compliant files. When I produce a PDF/A file, Adobe Reader 10 will launch with an informational bar at top:O "The file you have opened complies with the PDF/A standard and has been opened read-only to prevent modification". Can you share what you know about this?L
Horcrux7 almost 12 years

We have write a software that generate PDF and PDF/A files (see my original posting). That I know that also not PDF/A compliance files was show as PDF/A file in Adobe Reader. We need only write the PDF/A signature.
ahmd0 about 11 years

DROID doesn't validate, it only identifies. JHOVE does validate PDFs, but not PDF/A.
a11r over 9 years

pdf-tools.com/pdf/pdf-validateur-pdfa-valider-iso.aspx
Ibn Saeed over 9 years

Jhove does validate PDF/A. Check there site: link....
Tilman Hausherr over 9 years

Now known as PDFBox Preflight pdfbox.apache.org/downloads.html#recent
Sylvain Rayé over 9 years

Free and no spam risk. +1 for this answer. thanks
mykhal almost 9 years

Ibn Saeed: citing from the linked doc: Note that the PDF module does not parse the contents on streams, so it cannot determine conformance to PDF/A to the degree required by the ISO standard.
Nemo over 8 years

@mykhal «That is not possible, since parts of the PDF/A rules are not machine-checkable AFAIK (like "metadata matches data" -- jhove is unable to understand the semantics of your document).» konradvoelkel.com/2013/03/scan-to-pdfa/#comment-2705
jbarlow over 7 years

Jhove's PDF/A module is quite buggy. Its output is nearly meaningless.
rominator007 over 7 years

Unfortunately the link at pdf.org is not available any more. At verapdf.org you will probably find the most "official" online tool for PDF validation. It is quite new and afaik in Beta. Until this changes I also stick with the preflight-validation of Adobe Acrobat
Admin almost 6 years

Very nice. This gives me a list of "violations" of PDF/A for my file, such as The value of the key Parent is 271 0 R but must be 208 0 R. But I have no idea how to "fix" these. I tried saving in the free adobe acrobat but it doesn't help.
Admin almost 6 years

Here is something that just worked for me on my mac laptop: I opened my (ordinary) PDF file in the mac "Preview" software. I "printed" it as a .ps file. I then re-opened the .ps file in Preview and saved as PDF. It now passes the pdf/a compliance.
waldyrious almost 5 years

Thanks @Michael, that was helpful! For those on Linux, I tried something similar which also worked: I opened the file on evince, and printed it to a PDF file. The resulting file passed PDF/A validation! Note that simply doing "File > Save as" was not sufficient; I had to use the Print menu for this to work.