Somebody asked me recently what the difference is between PDF/X-1a (first published in 2001) and PDF/X-4 (published in 2010). I thought this might also be interesting to a wider audience.

Both are ISO standards that deliberately restrict some aspects of what you can put into a PDF file in order to make them more reliable for delivery of jobs for professional print. But the two standards address different needs/desires:

PDF/X-1a content must all have been transformed into CMYK (optionally plus spots) already, so it puts all of the responsibility for correct separation and transparency handling onto the creation side. When it hits Harlequin, all the RIP can do is to lock in the correct overprint settings and (optionally) pre-flight the intended print output condition, as encapsulated in the output intent.

On the other hand, PDF/X-4 supports quite a few things that PDF/X-1a does not, including:

• Device-independent color spaces
• Live PDF transparency
• Optional content (layers)

That moves a lot more of the responsibility downstream into the RIP, because it can carry unseparated colors and transparency.

Back when the earlier PDF/X standards were designed transparency handling was a bit inconsistent between RIPs, and color management was an inaccessible black art to many print service providers, which is why PDF/X-1a was popular with many printers. That’s not been the case for a decade now, so PDF/X-4 will work just fine.

In other words, the choice is more down to where the participants in the exchange want the responsibility to sit than to anything technical any more.

In addition, PDF/X-4 is much more easily transitioned between different presses, and even between completely different print technologies, such as moving a job from offset or flexo to a digital press. And it can also be used much more easily for digital delivery alongside using it for print. For many people that’s enough to push the balance firmly in favour of PDF/X-4.

The post What’s the difference between PDF/X-1a and PDF/X-4? appeared first on PDF Association.

However, no robot is present at RPA in an everyday office life. They are software solutions that ‘look over people’s shoulders’ and learn from their work processes, but that only works if the processes are standardized. To achieve this, the files to be processed should be as homogeneous as possible. In practice, however, this is not always easily achieved. After all, the goal is to process as many files as possible using the same automated processes, ideally also for externally supplied data. For this reason, it often makes sense to have a standardization (or in this case better a ‘normalization’) step for the data at the beginning of the process. This will often begin with format conversions, e.g. Office to PDF. In order to ensure a certain quality for all PDFs, it may also make sense to normalize them to PDF/A first.

We will all agree that PDF is a really good, if not the only sensible candidate for the basic format of file-related RPA processes – at least when provided from outside. But there are possible requirements that go beyond PDF, related to the quality of the PDF files. An example is scanned files that are saved as PDF. Without OCR, they are not full-text capable and therefore a pixel-filled image. As a rule, RPA applications cannot do much with them – except OCR them with the known limitations. In PDF, displaying the characters on the monitor, which is essential for electronic paper, is different from deriving the meaning of the characters (semantics). For example, to project a small ‘c’ onto the monitor, its shape in the respective font is required. However, in order for the ‘c’ to be found in the text search and correctly interpreted when copying, its semantic understanding is necessary – in PDF jargon, it is equivalent to the Unicode character ‘Latin small letter c’. If text search is needed to RPA the files, it has to be sure that such semantics are actually there.

Above text semantics, metadata integrated into a PDF file can be a very important tool for advanced RPA processes. In PDF, metadata can be associated with the document, individual pages or even page components. Processing information can be derived from a data base and – if the documents come from an external source – added as metadata to the PDF with detailed descriptions that RPA can use. The software robot uses the information contained in the PDF and processes it accordingly. An approach that is standard in today’s prepress production workflows!

The highest degree of structural information beyond page rendering in PDF can be achieved via tagging and from a RPA perspective ‘tagging’ can also provide information needed e.g. for content extraction for reuse in a database. Tags (markers) define the semantics of text parts, such as headings, paragraphs, captions or tables. They are the basis for defined reading order, e.g. in multi-column layouts. Unfortunately, correctly tagged PDF files are still a rarity today – even though it is undisputed that they are the most qualified basic format for some RPA processes.

The cross-media provision of PDF documents is a use case, where among other things companies make their advertising available both in the form of printed brochures and on their website. While the ‘ready-to-print’ PDF requires that the file contains correspondingly high-resolution images or crop marks, the online PDF involves deleting existing print marks, limiting the visible page area and reducing complexity and file sizes for fast display. Creating different PDFs from the source layout is often impractical, as there is always the risk of losing last-minute changes. Using RPA, color spaces in the print PDF can be modified for online use, image resolutions can be reduced, pages can be cropped and complex page areas can be converted to images in advance to enable display at acceptable speed – even on older tablets.

As mentioned before, RPA with PDF files are already used in prepress workflows on a very advanced and highly automated level. Companies that want to benefit from RPA should first create the conditions for smoothly functioning RPA-based applications. While in prepress, you have additional requirements that are not needed in office, you have the requirement, in both cases, to check the quality of a PDF file and whether it qualifies for automation and to normalize it for this purpose if possible.

The post RPA-based office workflows, using PDF appeared first on PDF Association.

Since 2003, Singapore has been using a national-level digital identity, called SingPass, which has been issued to more than 3.8 million citizens and residents. It was originally meant to solve the problem of each government agency having their own set of credentials to verify a user’s identity, very much similar to how we have different accounts for each bank or online services. Today, it has evolved to a gateway allowing access to over 300 digital services offered by more than 60 government agencies and some private sector entities. More than 70 million transactions are conducted with SingPass annually. A recent survey conducted by the Smart Nation and Digital Government Office showed that citizens’ and businesses’ satisfaction with government digital services had increased by eight percentage points in 2019 to reach 86 per cent and 77 per cent respectively, the highest since 2012.

NDI was developed as an extension of this platform, and as part of it the SingPass Mobile app was launched to provide a simpler method of authenticating a user’s identity online. It securely stores an individual’s digital identity and individuals can use it prove their identity and to provide authorization, using biometrics features on the phone.

In addition, NDI brings various digital initiatives like SingPass/SingPass Mobile, MyInfo and MyInfo Business together to provide greater online convenience and transactional security for citizens and businesses alike. By integrating NDI into their offerings, businesses can improve both customer service, and their internal business processes.  NDI has been described “as a cornerstone of the digital economy”, and it is clear that businesses operating in the economy of Singapore will need to take note.

Economically, there are certain ecosystems which businesses simply must be part of. You can now add NDI to this list.

So, why should businesses use NDI? By creating a trusted digital ecosystem, the NDI APIs allow data and services to transcend the boundaries of organizations, offering businesses benefits such as:

• Online “one-click” registrations: with MyInfo you can obtain information from consenting individuals and use data from government sources to identify and verify a customer’s identity with eKYC (electronic Know Your Customer) procedures.
• In-Person Identity Verification: with SingPass you can verify the identity of users and obtain information from them by simply scanning QR codes
• Online Authentication: with SingPass you can securely authenticate users of your online services, without the need to implement and maintain your own infrastructure and systems.
• Remote Authorization: with SingPass you can notify and seek authorisation for transactions from customers who are not physically present. (coming soon)
• Digital Signing: with SingPass you can empower your customers to digitally sign documents (contracts, agreements etc.) which benefit from legal presumptions under the Electronics Transaction Act in Singapore. (coming soon)
• Biometrics-as-a-Service: with SingPass you can use facial recognition as an alternative way of verifying a person’s identity, without needing to collect biometrics data. (coming soon)

It is important to note that the features of the NDI platform listed above relate to customers being able to authenticate themselves before entering a secure environment where your business can offer and exchange digital documents online with citizens in Singapore. So how does this apply to the existing customer journeys at my business you might ask? Let’s give you some examples where hassle-free registration and seamless transactions are useful.

Example business use-cases using NDI

• Account opening/credit card/loan application at financial institutions
• Quotation and Invoice creation at any business
• Making online appointments in healthcare or any other business
• Booking tickets at events, transportation, hospitalization businesses
• Stay in touch with customers since users can easily update their details centrally in MyInfo without needing to resubmit documents for verification.
• Online onboarding of new users can apply to any business
• Accessing personal, financial, medical, or educational records safely and securely.
• Entering into an agreement with an electricity company, entering into a lease, an interim office, signing a registered shipment, and so on. Any exchange of signed documents in healthcare, finance, telecom, real estate, or hospitality is eligible.

These are not just potential use-cases though, they’re applicable right now. In 2017, the Singapore Government extended MyInfo to the private sector, making it one of the first governments in the world to give citizens the ability to consent and securely share their data with businesses.

“In an interview following the MyInfo private sector extension, the head of e-business at OCBC Bank Singapore, one of the largest banks in APAC, said that it previously took customers an average 2 to 3 working days to open an account. Thanks to MyInfo the same application can be done in under 5 minutes. In addition, after MyInfo was implemented digital account applications went up 3 times in a few months with 80% of those applications using MyInfo.”

Enough said right? Yet this increasingly digital world means businesses in Singapore who still have paper document workflows need to urgently replace them with fully automated digital document workflows. Once customers use MyInfo and SingPass more and more, the direct consequence will be you’ll need to serve documents digitally instead of paper documents. Both available online and in a workable digital format.

For some time now, people in Singapore have been stepping away from any kind of document flow which still demands they 1) print to paper, 2) sign on paper, 3) submit paper by post, or scan paper and email back to businesses. Who can blame them? If you too could finally be able to avoid the slog of manually filling out forms or having to repeatedly provide your personal data over and over again when signing contracts online, wouldn’t you feel the same?

Initiatives such as NDI cause the exchange of data and documents to increasingly become purely digital, ultimately creating a new default citizen behavior. Needless to say, if a business in Singapore is still printing on paper and not to a digital file format (such as PDF, one of the most popular and flexible file formats in the world), is that such a business is a) guaranteed to lose money due to time consuming and error prone paper workflows and b) lose users and customers due to the lack of user convenience. This last one is also known as losing market share.

So instead of losing market share, let’s propel the growth of your business and its market share. If you weren’t already convinced to start NDI integration, we should have your attention now.

NDI creates a need for PDF document creation and manipulation

The NDI APIs are already available and well-documented for your current IT team or System Integrator. That’s simple enough. But how do you get your IT team started on high volume digital document generation and processing? Do you let them develop this functionality from scratch? Go through a long process of trial and error, bugs, etc.?

No, developing and testing is new software no joke and takes a long time before you can really call it stable and secure. Far better to look for an existing toolbox which allows your business to create, edit, design, redact, recognize, extract, sign, secure PDF documents on a massive scale.

Governments and multinational companies are using iText on an enormous scale, airlines, banks, telecom, healthcare companies etc. The iText SDK leans on 20 years of code. Code which is proven to be performant and stable enough to be implemented in business-critical applications by thousands of businesses worldwide over the past 20 years. Have a look at PDFs you receive from other organizations like boarding passes, tickets, invoices, bank statements. Chances are, when you’re looking at the file information, you’ll find it was generated using iText.

Tip: Use templates for high volume PDF generation

The above actions often require PDF generation in high volumes, and a way to simplify this is using templates. iText offers developers various ways of generating and manipulating PDF documents, with or without templates, but iText DITO was developed to give both developers and non-developers a way to design and maintain templates for PDFs without any programming. Users are able design their templates using a graphical user interface and can link data from various sources to elements of the template in the same way. It’s a powerful PDF template engine which combines iText’s proven abilities in mass-producing high-quality PDFs, with a graphical interface for designing templates.

Digital Signing of PDF agreements with SingPass

Once the Sign with SingPass capabilities go live, while you’re digitally transforming your workflows with iText’s PDF knowledge and technology, you’ll have to look at gaining knowledge in digital signing of PDFs too. Benefits of using digital signatures include automating and securing your digital document workflow, saving you time, money and headache.

There are three main goals of digital signatures:

• Integrity: assurance that the document has not been changed somewhere in the workflow.
• Authenticity: assurance that the author of the document is who we think it is (and not somebody else)
• Non-repudiation: assurance that the author cannot deny their authorship.

These three concepts combined allow you to feel confident that your documents are both secure and correct throughout your workflow. Moreover, digital signature solutions offer various advantages such as increased efficiency, reduced turnover time, lower costs, and enhanced security. They also ensure enhanced data integrity, scalability, and transparency, and customer satisfaction, propelling the digital signature market growth.

And the market is certainly growing at quite a pace. According to a recent report published by MARKETSANDMARKETS Research, the global digital signature market is projected to grow from USD 1.2 billion in 2018 to USD 5.5 billion by 2023, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 36.7%.

Conclusion

Public and private organizations worldwide have been looking at the possibilities allowed by Singapore’s NDI platform with awe. Yet this also means digital document workflows have become essential to anyone doing business in Singapore.

So, if this applies to you, make sure you profit from these advantages by utilising the tools already at your disposal.

The NDI API, the iText SDK and the low code template generator iText DITO®.

Looking for help with digitalizing your document workflows to prepare for integration with Singapore’s National Digital Identity platform? Click here.

Still have questions?

If you are interested in learning more or have additional questions, contact us

If you are interested in learning more about the iText 7 suite, click here

If you are interested in learning more about iText DITO, click here

Original Post: https://itextpdf.com/en/blog/itext-news/singapore-ndi-your-business-ready-integrate

The post Singapore NDI: Is your business ready to integrate? appeared first on PDF Association.

„Unser OctoberPDFest ist eine hervorragende Gelegenheit, sich über die neuesten PDF-Standards, bewährte Verfahren, Innovationen und Ideen zum Einsatz der leistungsstarken PDF-Technologie bei der Bewältigung von Geschäftsanforderungen zu informieren“, sagt Duff Johnson, CEO der PDF Association. „Darüber hinaus ist ein interdisziplinärer Wissenstransfer über die Live-Diskussionen gewährleistet.“

Die vorläufige Agenda umfasst mehr als 30 Online-Vorträge. Angefangen bei den PDF-Standards, über Anwendungsszenarien, spezielle Aufgabenstellungen bis hin zu branchenspezifischen Anwendungen, werden sämtliche Aspekte zum Einsatz der PDF-Technologie umfassend abgedeckt.

Interessenten können ab sofort unter https://www.pdfa.org/agenda/octoberpdfest-online/ die vorläufige Agenda einsehen. Ab dem 21. August ist die Registrierung zur kostenfreien Teilnahme möglich.

Über die PDF Association:
Die PDF Association verfolgt das Ziel, PDF-Anwendungen für digitale Dokumente zu fördern, die auf offenen Standards basieren. Dazu setzt sich der internationale Verband für eine aktive Wissensvermittlung und den Austausch von Know-how und Erfahrungen für alle Interessengruppen weltweit ein. Derzeit sind mehr als 150 Unternehmen und zahlreiche Experten aus mehr als 35 Ländern Mitglied der PDF Association. Die PDF Association, Inc., eine Tochtergesellschaft mit Sitz in den USA, verwaltet die Standardisierung von PDF und anderen Standards in ISO TC 171 SC 2.
Der Vorstand der PDF Association setzt sich aus Führungskräften der Unternehmen AbleDocs, Adobe, callas software, Datalogics, Digital Frontiers, Dual Lab, Foxit, intarsys, iText, Nitro Software, Orpalis, PDFTron und Peter Wyatt, ISO-32000-Projektleiter, zusammen. Vorstandsvorsitzender ist Matt Kuznicki. Chief System Architect bei AbleDocs. Sein Stellvertreter ist Dietrich von Seggern, Geschäftsführer der callas software GmbH. Geschäftsführer der PDF Association ist Duff Johnson, Projektleiter ISO-32000 und ISO-14289.

Ihre Redaktionskontakte für Europa:
Thomas Zellmann
Landgrafenstr. 14
D-10787 Berlin
Phone: +49 30 39 40 50 – 50
Fax: +49 30 39 40 50 – 99
thomas.zellmann@pdfa.org

good news! GmbH
Nicole Gauger
Kolberger Str. 36
D-23617 Stockelsdorf
Phone: +49 451 881 99 – 12
Fax: +49 451 881 99 – 29
pdfa@goodnews.de
www.goodnews.de

The post PDF Association initiiert erstes OctoberPDFest appeared first on PDF Association.

How to process thousands of PDF forms quickly and easily?

Why not help citizens out and avoid mistakes, by prefilling some of the already known data? With iText 7 Core, you can do this. And once PDF forms have been filled in, you can again use iText 7 Core to extract the data and pass it on to other software or databases, as required.

Scenario 1: Prefilling data in existing digital PDF forms

Take the example of the Passenger Locator Form mentioned above, travel agencies have a huge opportunity here to offer an improved customer service to their customers when they have to fill in those forms. Since these agencies know already most of the personal details and flight or travel details of their customers, they can offer a service whereby the agency:

1. takes the Passenger Locator Form supplied by the government
2. prefills the customer and travel data
3. makes those updated input fields read-only
4. digitally signs the form in the name of the travel agency
5. forwards the updated form to their clients
6. the clients only fill in the missing data
7. they digitally sign the form one last time
8. they send it back to their travel agency
9. which then in turn delivers it to the government

In this way, travel agencies can behave like a proxy between the government and the traveler, making the lives of their customers easier and reducing hassle. All this can easily be done using iText 7 Core.

An alternative solution could be working with iText DITO®, a low code template generator, where a similar form to the government is created from scratch, customers fill this in online, after which the input data is merged with a similar PDF template and sent back to the government.

Scenario 2: Extracting data from digital PDF forms

There are several tools out there that enable this. In the case of documents such as the Passenger Locator Form produced by the Belgian Government, iText 7 Core is ideal for this type of data extraction. These documents use interactive PDF Form technologies such as AcroForms or XFA, and it’s simple to extract data from them using iText.

However, with PDF documents which are not based on PDF Forms, you should opt for iText pdf2Data, an add-on to the iText 7 Core PDF library for Java and C# (.NET), that allows you to easily extract data from PDF documents in high volumes. It offers a framework to intelligently recognize data inside PDF documents, based on selection rules that you define in a template. This means that you can create a fully automated solution for data recognition in a PDF document with basic set-up on the original form template. Data extraction is based on dynamic selectors which can be defined to recognize fonts, tables, text patterns and more. To ensure you have the best possible results, it leverages iText’s text extraction, which offers a high-fidelity recognition process.

Check it out with the example document on our pdf2Data demo site. Alternatively, upload your own document to try. 

Scenario 3: Extracting data from paper PDF forms

Another scenario is where scanned documents or images are received containing printed text in huge amounts. But without machine-readable text, the content cannot be edited, searched, indexed or processed.

iText pdfOCR offers Optical Character Recognition functionality to convert your scanned documents, PDFs and images into fully ISO-compliant PDF or PDF/A-3u files making it possible to access and process the text they contain that you can then feed into pdf2Data, for example.

Scenario 4: You don’t already have PDF Passenger Locator Forms, and need to design and create them urgently

iText DITO® makes databinding easy. Using the visual editor, you simply specify in your PDF template where certain data should be located within document layout. Your different data binds can be configured within the iText DITO® user interface. Customer data, flight information, etc. can be taken from a database and inserted automatically, meaning these details can be accurately communicated and recorded.

Conditional content is another very useful feature. Forms can’t be made too overwhelming with too many input fields. Many people will not be able to fill them in correctly, when you really need accurate information. With iText DITO® conditional content capabilities you can easily define elements within the form which need to remain hidden until the values entered in the form meet certain criteria.

iText has even more solutions for PDF Creation depending on different development approaches, such as using AcroForms, or converting any webpage form (HTML) to PDF with pdfHTML, Of course, you can also incorporate other features into your PDFs such as digital signatures, securing PDFs with passwords or encryption etc.

Use iText when you need PDF in your digital document workflows

iText is a global leader in PDF technology. They develop innovative award-winning PDF software which is used by millions of users – both open source and commercial – to create digital documents for a variety of purposes: invoices, bank statements, mobile boarding passes, legal archiving, and more. The most commonly used actions required by any business handling PDFs in high volumes are all covered by iText: digitally signing PDFs, automating PDF generation, automating PDF processing, PDF customization, data-driven PDF templates, converting PDFs to images, OCR scanned files and images into searchable PDFs, converting HTML to PDF, multiple accurate rendering of multiple languages and scripts, redacting PDF content etc.

The iText SDK codebase has been around for over 20 years. Its feature set and capabilities gives developers many options for creating and manipulating PDFs. With iText you can rest assured that PDFs generated with the iText SDK will comply with ISO regulations, and provides functionality to ensure things like accessibility, archivability etc. need not be a concern. iText offers robust and excellent support in critical times.

In short: You can save crucial time and money by using the existing solutions iText offers. Both are reasons which are of an increasing importance to many public and private organizations in today’s COVID-19 times.

In urgent situations where time is of the essence and the economy is under stress, start working on digital document workflows for your organization with iText.

Still have questions?

If you are interested in learning more or have additional questions, contact us

If you are interested in learning more about the iText 7 suite, click here

Original Post: https://itextpdf.com/en/blog/itext-news/passenger-locator-forms-digital-document-workflow-urgency-during-covid-19

The post Passenger Locator Forms: a digital document workflow urgency during COVID-19 appeared first on PDF Association.

Strategic partnership with the German manufacturer movemen

As a result of the strategic cooperation with the German manufacturer movemen, a first variant for MathML (Mathematical MarkUp Language) support in MadeToTag was developed, which we are proud to announce today. The company movemen is the developer of MathTools, an Adobe InDesign/InDesign Server plug-in. MathTools provides a typographically correct way to create and format mathematical expressions, such as equations, directly in Adobe InDesign. The equations are displayed as text and can be edited directly with the text formatting tools in InDesign. The workaround using embedded images or objects can thus be avoided.

MathML support in MadeToTag

MathML is a markup language that describes the structure of a mathematical equation in order to better understand its semantics. With the new version 1.9.100, you can now choose in MadeToTag’s output process to place the MathML as an annotation over the mathematical expressions (formulas, equations, fractions) in the PDF/UA. The only requirement for taking advantage of this new MadeToTag feature is that you are working with equations that were previously set in InDesign by MathTools from movemen. In order to use this feature in MadeToTag, you need to set the check mark for ‘Create MathML annotations’ in processing step 7 ‘Create PDF file with tags’. Then the annotation will automatically be placed over all formulas contained in the document:

Contrary to equations which were included as embedded images or objects, the equation’s semantic structure is furthermore available as MathML and can therefore be better supported by assistive technologies.

As already mentioned, axaio software has set itself an objective: implementing additional variants for representing mathematical expressions in tagged PDF/UA in the next months – let’s stay curious.

The post MadeToTag supports Math equations in cooperation with MathTools developer movemen appeared first on PDF Association.

This October, join us as we discuss the latest standards, best practices, innovations and ideas about leveraging powerful and ubiquitous PDF technology to solve business problems and control costs.

Although OctoberPDFest ONLINE presentations are informational and educational, presenters may discuss their solutions following the educational portion of their presentation.

Check out the agenda and mark your calendars! Registration opens August 24. Attendance is limited, so register early.

The post OctoberPDFest Preliminary Agenda appeared first on PDF Association.

Since web browsers took over mainstream PDF viewing several years ago, high-quality support for Tagged PDF in web browsers has always been a key objective for advocates of accessible documents.

Google’s announcement is proof that not only is the web continuing to move in the direction of accessibility, but web technology companies are recognizing that support for PDF is key to modern web browsing.

PDF Association member CommonLook worked with Google on this development and is quoted in Google’s post.

In discussing this work with the PDF Association, CommonLook’s Co-CEO and Director of Development Ferass Elrayes, who has participated in the development of PDF/UA since 2004, said:

“CommonLook provided technical and standards-related advice to the Google team working on the project. There are obvious challenges and still more to be done as the quality of the tagging is highly dependent on the underlying HTML. But clearly this is a major step forward and we continue to work with Google to provide guidance as they progressively improve the tagging.”

I’d met with the Chrome team in August, 2018 to discuss Tagged PDF and encourage its adoption. Following the announcement I reached out to Google’s Dominic Mazzoni, who led the effort. He said:

“This change will benefit end-users directly when they want to generate an accessible PDF, but also indirectly, as content creators who use an HTML-based workflow to produce PDFs now have another option to use that generates tagged PDFs.”

The Chrome team has posted some quick tips on how to use Chrome from the command-line to transform a document directly into a PDF.

Invented in 1993 as a page description format, PDF’s unique set of capabilities continues to deliver unmatched value to users worldwide. As browsers continue to improve their support for PDF we expect users to see the benefits of  not only accessible content in PDF files, but more powerful and reusable PDF documents in general.

The post Chrome adds support for Tagged PDF appeared first on PDF Association.

Co-chaired by Patrick Scouten (AbleDocs) and Paul Rayius (CommonLook), this Working Group’s activities will include:

• Providing a vendor-neutral discussion-place for matters of specific interest to service-providers
• Enhancing the common understanding of best practice in accessibility authoring and remediation
• Studying best-practice in business contexts (tagging for usability, tagging in sub-optimal contexts, limited access to authors, etc.)
• Perhaps some sort of “observatory” function to factually and neutrally monitor and report on viewer/AT software combinations

The WG’s first meeting will be held via GoToMeeting on September 1 at 11:00 ET for one hour.

Participation in the Accessibility Service Bureau Working Group is limited to PDF Association members and invited experts.

Members wishing to participate in this Working Group’s meetings should login to pdfa.org and select “Manage communities” to request access.

The post Announcing the Accessibility Service Bureau Working Group appeared first on PDF Association.

Global Graphics Software has licensed its Mako SDK to Racami, the authors of the Alchem-e customer communications management platform (CMM). Mako converts incoming documents into PDF and optimizes these files for onward processing through multiple delivery channels such as email, web viewing, bill payment, and printing.

Alchem-e is widely used by the insurance, financial, healthcare, book publishing, and marketing sectors to support the mass production and distribution of customer communications.  Corporate clients are often looking to reduce operating costs, comply with government regulations, speed up printing times, and automate processes.

One of the challenges in the industry is standardizing the multitude of data and print streams that are commonly used. This is important because the variety of file formats and the inconsistency in how they are constructed causes work to slow down or be of poor quality. Data preparation slows down, printers slow down, jobs are constrained to specific workflows and equipment. Normalization is key to solving this problem and companies use Alchem-e with the embedded Global Graphics Mako technology to speed up processing, reduce file sizes, and produce higher quality output.

Matt Mahoney, executive VP of Sales and Marketing at Racami comments, “As companies mature with multi-channel communications for marketing and transaction processing, they benefit from clean optimized PDF files. We are extremely happy with our choice to work with Global Graphics. We embed their Mako technology into Alchem-e and offer it as a stand-alone PDF preflight tool. Global Graphics is one of the best companies we’ve worked with because they are so responsive.”

“It’s exciting to work with Racami because they regularly bring us new challenges,” says Global Graphics Software’s Paul Hagen, VP of sales. “We investigate these straightaway and because we give our customers access to the product manager their requests are quickly translated into an item for our roadmap.

“Mako is multi-functional like a Swiss army knife. Racami started off using one of the blades to transform incoming files into robust PDFs.  We’re pleased to see them using other facets of this very capable technology with PDF optimization. It’s an interesting application of our technology and we sense that they have a growing market presence and great brand awareness.”

Ends

The post Mako adds value to Racami transactional workflow appeared first on PDF Association.