Previewing PDF Days Online 2021
Excerpt: We preview some of what’s coming at PDF Days Europe 2021 with sessions in accessibility, production, security and core PDF technology.
About the author: The staff of the PDF Association are dedicated to delivering the information, services and value members have come to expect.
Contents
The PDF Association’s Board of Directors has determined that PDF Days will go entirely online for 2021. A revised agenda is available and registration is open. All sessions are free!
PDF Days Online 2021 is an event for those professionally concerned with PDF technology. The agenda is packed with informative sessions presented by recognized experts from around the world.
Technical Days
As the world’s chosen digital document format, PDF covers a vast range of applications. PDF Days events provide a sampling of applications and interests but cannot begin to fully cover it all. Accordingly, at each event we select a few key areas of focus. For 2021 these are: PDF production, security and authentication, accessibility and core PDF technology.
PDF production
Among the most typical of document workflows is the process of generating PDF documents from source files, imaging systems, web-pages, databases or other PDF documents. These sessions offer perspectives on various aspects of PDF production, including:
- Create PDFs using HTML by Francois Fernandes of Digital Frontiers
- PDF/A Conversion and Validation Challenges by Elodie Tellier of Orpalis
- Two Standards. One Goal. Modernizing Print Communication Production by Mary Ann Rowan of Solimar Systems
- STOP PRESS! Or how to avoid it! By David Stevenson of Global Graphics
- Archiving email – as PDF? by Dietrich von Seggern of callas software
- PDF/R revisions and new, highly compressed image formats by Rene Rebe, TWAIN Working Group
Security and Authentication
Cybersecurity, and associated rigorous understandings of integrity are major subjects across every computing domain, including digital documents. The world runs on PDF documents, so even prospective vulnerabilities matter. PDF Days sessions focusing on various aspects of securing or authenticating PDF content include:
- How to make e-Signing interoperable by Carsten Heiermann of Foxit Corporation
- Validating digital signatures in PDF by Bernd Wild of intarsys
- Cryptography in PDF: future perspectives by Matthias Valvekens of iText
- Content Authenticity and PDF by Leonard Rosenthol of Adobe
- SafeDocs – towards a more secure future by Peter Wyatt, PDF Association CTO
- Making sense of PDF structures in the wild at scale by Tim Allison of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Accessibility
Governments and enterprises alike are increasingly requiring that digital document content be accessible to all users. Due to PDF’s inherent flexibility, the nature of authoring software and the variability in author awareness and skills, achieving accessibility presents challenges for software developers and authors alike. PDF Days includes several sessions directly pertaining to accessibility:
- WCAG or PDF/UA: what’s the difference by Boris Doubrov of Dual Lab
- Accessible PDF – How to tag content the right way by Klaas Posselt of Einmanncombo
- What makes a tagged PDF a proper tagged PDF/UA document? by Rene Treuber of axaio software
- Lessons from implementing a PDF/UA-centric mobile reader by Matt Kuznicki of AbleDocs
- Content accessibility for all screen sizes by Andrey Safonov of PDFTron
- Deriving HTML from PDF – lessons learned by Roman Toda of Normex
PDF technology
The core value proposition for PDF was established in the 1990s and remains fully operative today. End users continue to depend on PDF fundamentals: reliable, self-contained and precise representations of an author’s intent. The PDF technology space continues to evolve and grow as current marketplace demands are felt. PDF Days sessions focussed on the future of PDF technology and PDF implementations include:
- The Low Code Revolution and PDF by Neil Pitman of Aquaforest (read the interview)
- Future of Traversing PDF Files by Michael Demey of iText
- OpenType color fonts in PDF by Thomas Merz of PDFlib
- 3DPDFs + the future by Andrey Safonov of PDFTron (read the interview)
- The Arlington PDF Model by Peter Wyatt, PDF Association CTO
- Survey of open source PDF solutions by Michael Vrhel of Artifex Software
Solution Days
Solution Days sessions are intended to inform end users of PDF technology software and applications of the latest offerings and other development by the companies that make PDF Days possible. The Solution Days will feature informative presentations on:
- accessibility from AbleDocs and axaio software
- archiving from callas software, Orpalis, Datalogics and SEAL Systems
- PDF creation from Solimar Systems and Actual Reports
- PDF processing from Foxit, PDFTron, iText and Aquaforest
Interviews with PDF Days speakers
Over the next month we’ll be publishing short previews of Technical Days sessions with each of the speakers. Three are already posted:
- Neil Pitman of Aquaforest will discuss how the Low Code / No Code movement pertains to PDF.
- Andrey Savonov of PDFTron covers content accessibility for all screen sizes.
- René Treuber of axaio reviews the differences between merely tagged PDF and PDF/UA conformance.