The Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC), with the Open Preservation Foundation (OPF), the PDF Association, Dual Lab and KEEP SOLUTIONS – otherwise known as the VeraPDF Consortium – have been awarded a PREFORMA first phase design contract under the PDF/A strand and are seeking consultation for phase 1 of the project.

PREFORMA (PREservation FORMAts for culture information/e-archives) is a Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) project co-funded by the European Commission, under its FP7-ICT Programme. PREFORMA’s objective is to develop open source validation tools for three file format standards including PDF, TIFF and a video format to support long-term preservation in memory institutions. For more information click here.

Starting work in November 2014, the VeraPDFa Consortium is gathering requirements from our collective members and the community in memory institutions and industry to build an authoritative conformance checker for PDF/A-1, PDF/A-2 and PDF/A-3.

The proposed software architecture will be presented to the PREFORMA panel in March 2015. The panel will then make a further selection amongst suppliers from phase 1 (research) to proceed to phase 2 (development).

As part of the phase 1 consultation, the OPF is holding a webinar to gather feedback on the functional specification of the validator tool, particularly on the policy requirements for memory institutions. The project is still in the competitive design phase of the PREFORMA call to tender and would like to ensure that our documentation represents real requirements, endorsed by our collective members, to increase our chance to proceed to phase 2 of the project. If we are successful in progressing to phase 2, we will then be in a position to take in to account your requirements when building the PDF/A validator.

DPC members, and particularly any specialists and enthusiasts on the subject of PDF validation, are invited to attend this webinar to present the VeraPDF functional specification and other documentation for your feedback. 

Overview of the Webinar

• Introduction and context
• Overview of validator and the functional specification (focussing on policy checking)
• Discussion and feedback

The webinar will take place on Tuesday 3 February at 12 noon GMT / 13:00 CET and will last approximately one hour. The webinar will be recorded for anyone who cannot attend at this time. 

The documents will be circulated in advance to allow time for review before the webinar.