Standards Watch

Standards announcements–short deadlines

The following are a group of fairly short (or very short) deadline announcements from
Cindy Hepfer, ALA’s Voting Representative to NISO. The fault for the delay in getting these out is mine, not hers!

1. New Work Item: ISO/WD 32000-2, Document management — Portable document format: Part 2: PDF 2.0. This is a liaison ballot from TC171/SC2 to approve a new work item and the working draft for the standard. This part of the PDF standard will add new features to ISO 32000-1 including support for geospatial data to images, support SWF navigation for collections, adds general rich media annotation type, support for barcodes, adds PRC to list of supported 3D models, adds structure elements for MathML, and enhances the accessibility.

US TAG members may “recommend” a US vote and provide comments. We may also nominate an expert to participate on this project. If anyone is interested in working on this project, please indicate the name and contact information in your comments.

The deadline for feedback to Cindy is Friday, Sept. 11, 2009 (that’s today folks, sorry!)

2. ISO/CD 19005-2, Electronic document file format for long-term preservation — Part 2: (PDF/A-2). This is a liaison ballot, and the earliest, committee draft stage, and the best opportunity to get any substantive changes to the standard. This part of ISO 19005 extends the capabilities of PDF/A described in Part 1 of ISO 19005 and is based on PDF version 1.7 (as defined in ISO 32000-1) rather than PDF version 1.4 which is used as the basis of Part 1. The added capabilities provided by this part of ISO 19005 are through compliance with PDF version 1.7 and many of the features enabled by that version include: 1) Improvements to tagged PDF (for enhanced accessibility; 2) Compressed Object and XRef streams (for smaller file sizes; 3) PDF/A-compliant file attachments, portable collections and PDF packages; 4) Transparency; and 5) JPEG 2000 compression.

Deadline for ALA member comments to Cindy is Monday, Sept. 14, 2009.

3. ISO/CD 14289, Electronic document file format enhancement for accessibility (PDF/UA). This is another liaison ballot, as well as the best opportunity to get any substantive changes to the standard. The primary purpose of this International Standard is to define an implementation of ISO 32000-2, known as PDF/UA (Universal Accessibility) that provides a mechanism for representing electronic documents rendered in the PDF format in a manner that allows the file to be accessible. These goals are accomplished by identifying the set of PDF components that may be used, as well as restrictions on the form of their use, within conforming PDF/UA files. PDF/UA is intended as a companion standard, to be used in conjunction with ISO 32000, ISO 19005, ISO 15930, and other standards as may apply for the purpose of achieving accessibility.

Deadline for ALA member comments to Cindy is Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2009.

4. ISO/CD 14641, Specifications concerning the design and the operation of an information system for electronic document preservation. This is again a liaison ballot and the earliest, committee draft stage, the best opportunity to get any substantive changes to the standard. This standard provides a set of technical specifications and organizational policies to be implemented for capture, archival and access of digital documents; ensuring legibility, integrity and traceability of these documents for the duration of their preservation and use. This standard is applicable to fixed-content documents and therefore does not refer to systems in which users have the ability to substitute or alter documents after capture.

Deadline for ALA member comments to Cindy is Friday, Sept. 25, 2009.

Since the reference documents for these standards are in a password protected area of the NISO web site, ALA members should request the document directly from Cindy, at HSLcindy@buffalo.edu. Please also copy me (metadata.maven@gmail.com) so we can keep track of interest in these standards announcements.

Diane I. Hillmann
LITA Standards Coordinator