[OS X TeX] How to make PDF/A document by LaTeX?

[Matti Vallinkoski]

On 2.3.2009, at 15:46, Daniel Becker wrote:

> Hallo  -
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I am trying to produce a pdf/a-1b document by the recently released  
>> pdfx package:
>>
>> \documentclass{book} 	
>> \usepackage[a-1b]{pdfx}
>> Hello!
>> \end{document}
>>
>
> My experience with this package is that it fails once your LaTeX- 
> Constructs become more complicated, include images of various sorts,  
> color etc. But I guess the package will be updated sometime in the  
> future.

I see. This is a PhD thesis in memoir class with (colour) figures  
produced in Matlab, and includes some dingbats (\rightthumbsdown and   
\leftthumbsup) plus the amssymb fonts;

> You know http://support.river-valley.com/wiki/index.php?title=Generating_PDF/A_compliant_PDFs_from_pdftex 
>  ???

Yes. I just found it too complicated to apply.

>> ! pdfTeX error (ext5): cannot open file for embedding.
>> l.137 ...eam attr{/N 4}  file{sRGBIEC1966-2.1.icm}
>>
>> !  ==> Fatal error occurred, no output PDF file produced!
>
> it means that the package tries to find a color profile file and you  
> don't provide it. For some reason, it is not delivered with the pdfx  
> package.

This was the reason to contact the Mac OS Mailing list. I was stranded.

> The website above links to a .zip file with all the necessary files,  
> including a sRGBIEC1966-2.1.icm

I did no see it! It was in the text, not as a reference. Thank you for  
pointing this out.

> They have it in the same folder so TeX can find it. I don't know  
> whether it can/should be moved to some place in a texmf tree.
>
> I think you can include any color Profile.
>
> Another link that might be interesting for you:
> http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/doc/cvs/Ps2pdf.htm (Ghostscript)
>
> ps2pdf can also use pdf as an input file ....

OK. I tried Acrobat Professional 7.

>> What does this mean? The pdfx package is included in TeXLive 2008,  
>> with all supporting files? Where is the colour profile and where  
>> should it be located, if found? It cannot be found in http://www.color.org/iccprofile.xalter 
>>  as suggested in  pdfx.pdf (from CTAN)
>
> Good luck :-)

This colour profile was all that was needed. At least, the pdf looks  
the same. Unfortunately, I have no valid test for PDF/A-1b...
The Acrobat 7 distiller gives OK for thesis.pdf->Acrobat->thesis.ps– 
 >Distiller->thesis.pdf/a-1x in about half the trials, crashes in the  
other half (for the same thesis.)
I should still try ps2pdf and find some more reliable verification  
tools.


Matti
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Matti Vallinkoski

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