I've been looking at PDF/A. Ghostscript 8.55 (not yet released) supports PDF/A-1b output, and I understand that Adobe Distiller does too, both as an output form and as a preflight check for conformance. I'm inclined to suggest that the document include something like this: PDF files to be published in this experiment are to be limited to the PDF/A-1 profile. PDF/A, also known as ISO 19005, is a profile of PDF designed for long-term archival storage. At the time of this writing, PDF/A-1 (ISO 19005-1:2005) is the current standard, based upon PDF 1.4, while PDF/A-2 is under development, based upon PDF 1.6. PDF/A-1 has two profiles, PDF/A-1a and PDF/A-1b. While -1a is preferable, it places requirements on generating software that may not be easily met, so -1b is permissible. Among other restrictions, PDF/A-1 removes PDF's ability to transport executable code, including Postscript and JavaScript. We place an additional restriction on the form of the file. The text portions of the document must be represented as text in the PDF file, not images of text. PDF/A-1 already disallows encryption, which is the basis of restricting text extraction or searching. The combination of these restrictions ensures that the resulting file will be searchable and the text can be extracted. Any thoughts? I believe the tools to ensure this are easily available - e.g., use ghostscript to make sure the fonts are embedded, and email the PDF to pdf2txt@xxxxxxxxx and make sure that the text that comes back is mostly the same as the ASCII version. Thanks, Bill _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf