Thu 13 Dec 2007

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PDF 1.7 is approved as ISO 32000

Big party at Adobe

THE ISO BALLOT to approve Adobe's PDF 1.7 as the ISO 32000 standard passed by an overwhelming vote.

The overall balloting was thirteen to one with one abstention for a 93 per cent approval and 7 per cent disapproval. Under ISO ballot rules, the vote required a two-thirds positive majority and not more than one-quarter negative minority for approval.

Nine countries voted Yes without comments: Australia, Bulgaria, China, Japan, Poland, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, and Ukraine. Four countries voted Yes with comments: Germany (11), Switzerland (19), UK (13), and USA (125). Only France voted No, with 37 comments, and Russian abstained.

James King of Adobe will serve as technical editor for the international working group meeting in late January to resolve all 205 comments. If all comments are resolved satisfactorily during that meeting, the revised document will published immediately. If they are not, there will be another two-month balloting period, after which the standard will be accepted if it receives no more negative votes.

Apparently ISO has resolved the international standards approval bottleneck that ensued after a number of countries had applied for participating member status just before the vote on Microsoft's proposed OOXML document standard. That problem came up when all those new "participating" member countries suddenly lost interest in, er... participating anymore after the vote on OOXML. µ

L'INQ
Adobe bog

Comments

misunderstanding of OOXML issue

The problem arising from OOXML occurred in subcommittee 34 (SC34) of the joint committee between ISO and IEC (JTC1). It never affected all of ISO. It still prevents SC34 from getting anything done.

The PDF specification is being approved by subcommittee 2 of technical committee 171. It has nothing to do with JTC1 and surely has nothing to do with SC34 of JTC1.

It's one thing for the average person to have no idea how ISO or IEC works, and to think the OOXML issue affects all of ISO, and to have no idea that IEC is just as affected by the OOXML issue as ISO is, but any respectable journalist should do some research and try to understand what they're reporting on.

The Inquirer should be ashamed to be associated with such bad reporting.
posted by : James Justin Harrell, 05 December 2007

Adobe PDF & ISO 32000

Well do you suppose that PDF as ISO 32000 is with or without the advertising?

I find it strange that a document format that is now open to advertising would be allowed to become an ISO spec.

Gotta love those ISO folks always looking ahead I guess.
posted by : FXi, 05 December 2007

20 committees, 68 subcommittees, and 4 joint committees oppose it!

James Harell you are wrong, you claim that it's all very clear and subcommittee 2 of technical committee 171 is the culprit and that JTC1 nothing to do with SC34 of JTC1.

Well I talked to the guys at the steering committee for the enactment of subcommittees and they tell me the situation at SC39 is livid. Moreover, subcommittee 32 of the JTC15 plans a takeover of SC34 as they can take it anymore.

They are planning a boycott of JTC1, JTC2 and JTC77 along with their buddies from subcommittees 5, 15 and 36 from the third regional secretariats. That puts the figures against the SC34 much more clearerÑ 20 committees, 68 subcommittees, and 4 joint committees oppose it. You should be ashamed of your poor reporting.
posted by : Willy, 06 December 2007

Ads in PDF is not ISO 32000

ISO 32000 is technically equivalent to what is in the current Adobe PDF Reference 1.7, but "reformatted" to meet the specifications of ISO.

Since the new "Ads in PDF" functionality recently announced by Adobe and Yahoo is something post 1.7, it is not included in part 1 of ISO 32000.

Whether ISO will choose to make it part of future parts of ISO 32000 will be a decision of that committee.
posted by : Leonard Rosenthol, 06 December 2007
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