Choosing the right file format for digitizing and archiving is critical to the storage space your digital data needs.
Furthermore, digital data must be stored in a machine-evaluable form. That is, digital data must be machine-readable, sorted, and filtered. We recommend saving documents in PDF format.
PDF stands for Portable Document Format and means exchange format for finished documents (literally translated: portable document format). Adobe Systems developed this format in the early 1990s with the aim of creating an electronic presentation format that is independent of the software and hardware used by scanning service Vancouver.
PDF documents can be read and displayed independently of the operating system. Fonts, colors, graphics, text boxes, page breaks, etc. are retained when exchanging the document between different programs as originally created by the author.
The PDF format is an open standard that has become very popular due to its free availability. PDF documents are used in many areas of our everyday life, such as the invoice for Internet orders, electronic publication of flyers, price lists, directions, lecture notes in colleges, etc. PDF documents can be easily opened on almost any computer and can be printed or printed at any time get saved.
The so-called PDF / A format is a specially developed PDF standard for the long-term archiving of electronic documents. The idea of the PDF-A standard is the clear visual reproducibility of documents and the minimization of necessary paper printouts. The provisions of this ISO standard ensure that the properties of a PDF-A document follow the guidelines of audit-proof archiving.
The core features for electronic filing are
- Exact reproducibility
- Long term readability and accessibility
- Unchangeability
Since the PDF-A format aims for exact reproducibility, no audio or movie files can be saved. The secure future playability of such data is not given. Since contents of the PDF-A documents must be accessible at all times, passwords do not allow encryption.
Because it is not certain that the people who know the passwords are always available. In addition, references to files outside the document (links) or embedded actions that alter or affect the appearance of the document are not possible. The reason for this lies in the requirement of immutability.
PDF documents - basic advantages of the PDF-A format:
- Possibility of full-text search
- Data can be displayed independently of operating system, product or manufacturer
- Data is self-contained and complete
- all types of documents are convertible to PDF-A
- already widely used archiving format in public administrations
Furthermore, electronic data capture provides for backward compatibility of future ad programs. This means that previously created PDF- documents will continue to be readable with newer programs. As a private person as well as a self-employed person, you have the option of storing electronic documents long-term readable, unchangeable, exactly reproducible and accessible for authorized third parties.
