Adobe and industry standards
From Adobe® PostScript® to Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF), Adobe has a tradition of establishing, supporting, and promoting standards. That tradition continues with our commitment to building technology solutions that embrace industry standards and meet customer requirements.
Adobe is an active member of key standards bodies, working groups, and industry associations that develop standards — including XML-based industry standards. We contribute ongoing resources and publish, review, and share technology.
Adobe's best-known standard is PDF, a fine example of innovation through standards. PDF is everywhere. It is a published specification that has become the de facto worldwide standard for a more secure and reliable way to distribute and exchange electronic documents. Adobe supports specific PDF versions that have been defined as open standards.
- PDF/X for printing, an ISO standard (PDF: 59k)
- PDF/A for archiving, final ISO standard anticipated by mid-2005 (PDF: 272k)
- PDF/E for engineering and PDF/Accessible, proposed as ISO standards
As a further innovation, Adobe developed the Intelligent Document Platform. Based on PDF and XML technologies, the Adobe Intelligent Document Platform helps enterprise organizations convert static documents to Intelligent Documents, and then integrate them with existing business processes.
Standards development and support
Technologies
Learn about how Adobe develops and supports other standards, such as those for PostScript, SVG, JDF (US), and accessibility.
Adobe helps drive standards
Learn about Adobe's involvement in more than 35 standards organizations worldwide.
Related products
Adobe Acrobat family
Create and exchange documents, collect and compare comments, and tailor the security of your files so you can distribute reliable and polished Adobe PDF documents with Adobe Acrobat® software.
Adobe LiveCycle products
Adobe LiveCycle™ products deliver document services to integrate manual processes into enterprise applications, improving customer communication, increasing operational efficiencies, and helping meet compliance mandates.
Learn more
Working smarter with Intelligent Documents
Learn how to use native XML and PDF to integrate documents into your existing IT environment without sacrificing document integrity or open standards.
Protecting electronic documents
Discover how persistent security policies and digital signature technology can help protect your Adobe PDF files.
PDF as a solution for pharmaceutical electronic submissions (PDF: 256k)
Find out how to speed time to market and contain costs by submitting information to regulatory agencies electronically.
PDF as a standard for managing and archiving documents and forms (PDF: 63k)
Learn how organizations that adopt PDF as a standard can easily share, exchange, store, and retrieve documents.
PDF as a standard for archiving (PDF: 272k)
Read how the combination of extensive tools and technology, along with a publicly available standard, make PDF an ideal format for electronic archives.
