An invoice laid on a letterhead
An invoice laid on a letterhead somebody else made.
An archivable PDF/A-3 form
A form that is also a PDF/A-3 file: every field already drawn, with a visible frame, expecting nothing from the reader's software.
A form and an archival file pull in opposite directions. A form leaves its fields for the reader's software to draw; an archival file forbids exactly that and demands that everything already be drawn into the page. This example brings the two together.
Each field carries its own drawing — the typed value drawn letter by letter, a tick or a dot drawn line by line — so the file expects nothing from the reader's software and needs no font it does not already carry. Every field has a frame around it so it is plain where to click, and the page says so; the frames stay optional, and the same form is valid without them.
What this example shows
- Fields already drawn into the file, instead of left to the reader's software.
- Ticks and dots drawn line by line rather than with characters.
- A form that passes archival validation as PDF/A-3.
The code, in full
The same document is written twice, once in each language. Both files are shown in full, with the code coloured on the server, and can be copied in one click.
The document itself
The same document is written in each of these languages. Open the one you want to look at.
What this document weighs
| Before | 120,803 bytes |
|---|---|
| Now | 50,301 bytes |
| Saved | 58.4 % |
Not one mark on the page changed. See every document measured.
Examples near this one
A pack built on three supplied sheets
A supply agreement standing on three PDF files the customer sent: a headed sheet under the front page, a plain sheet under every page the schedule runs to, and a page of conditions that goes in whole.
The evaluation watermark
What an unlicensed copy looks like: the evaluation watermark the library stamps on every page.
An interactive form
A form a reader fills in: text boxes, a check box, a drop-down, radio buttons.
A Factur-X electronic invoice
An electronic invoice: a PDF/A-3 file carrying its own XML.
The embedded ICC profile
The ICC profile the library embeds in a PDF/A file.
Glossary
- PDF/A
- A PDF made to be readable in twenty years' time. Everything it needs is inside the file — the fonts, the colours, the description of what it is — so nothing it depends on can go missing later. Public bodies and archives ask for it by name.