Let me add to this that over here in the Netherlands we have decided that drug (ab)use is a matter of public health, not a matter of crime. This is probably why the average age of our population of heroin users goes up by about one year every year.
PDF 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 1.5, 1.6 are not formal open standards, which means i cannot use them. These also have accessibility issues.
Then we have the so-called application profiles: PDF/UA, PDF/A-2a, PDF/A-2b and A-2u, PDF/E (engineering), PDF/H (healthcare) are closed standards.
PDF-X (for print) and PDF/A-1b are open standards but have accessibility issues.
Which leaves PDF/A-1a and PDF/A-1b (both of which are based on 1.4). Of these two only PDF/A-1a is a formal open standard and has accessibility features (logical structure, PDF tagging)
1.7 just became an ISO standard and probably should be added to this list, although according to my knowledge also has accessibillity issues. PDF/UA stands for Universal Accessibility but is not a formal open standard yet.
So - PDF-hell for me is trying to explain this to my customers and training them not to just use any-old-pdf-their-printer-supplied-them. Also: finding software (which is easy to use) that can actually make PDF/A-1a.
[...] use (open) standards - if available - for structure, meaning, representation, identification, presentation, storage and access. [...]
Which means no more PDF hell. As most PDF-formats have proprietary extensions, or have accessibility issues, currently I can only officially/legally use PDF/A-1a. As you can imagine, this is a royal pain in the back for my customers who have to export all their documents and get the PDF settings juuust right. In the future they can just upload the documents and link to them. (Yaay for us!)
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Let me add to this that over here in the Netherlands we have decided that drug (ab)use is a matter of public health, not a matter of crime. This is probably why the average age of our population of heroin users goes up by about one year every year.
PDF 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 1.5, 1.6 are not formal open standards, which means i cannot use them. These also have accessibility issues.
Then we have the so-called application profiles: PDF/UA, PDF/A-2a, PDF/A-2b and A-2u, PDF/E (engineering), PDF/H (healthcare) are closed standards.
PDF-X (for print) and PDF/A-1b are open standards but have accessibility issues.
Which leaves PDF/A-1a and PDF/A-1b (both of which are based on 1.4). Of these two only PDF/A-1a is a formal open standard and has accessibility features (logical structure, PDF tagging)
1.7 just became an ISO standard and probably should be added to this list, although according to my knowledge also has accessibillity issues. PDF/UA stands for Universal Accessibility but is not a formal open standard yet.
So - PDF-hell for me is trying to explain this to my customers and training them not to just use any-old-pdf-their-printer-supplied-them. Also: finding software (which is easy to use) that can actually make PDF/A-1a.