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PDF/X, PDF/A, PDF/E
The next three categories all address compatibility with three standards to which a PDF file may conform. These standards consist of a set of rules that ensure a PDF file will have the best chance of working well. The three standards are:
- PDF/X: Ensures the file will work when sent for professional printing (all fonts embedded, no RGB colors, etc.).
- PDF/A: Ensures the file is appropriate for archiving-that is, it will remain readable for a long time, despite changes in technology.
- PDF/E: Makes the file particularly useful for engineering documents.
All three of these standards have variations that we’ll ignore here, though we’ll talk about the different flavors of PDF/X in a future article.
The extent to which these standards matter to you depends mostly on what your print service needs. Ask if they need PDF files to be PDF/X compliant. If so, the controls in the Convert category (Figure 17) will call predefined PDF fix-its which will change your PDF file so it conforms to the PDF/X rules. The control settings in Figure 16 are a reasonable choice for a printed document.
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Figure 17 You can have the preflight engine modify your PDF file so it conforms to one of the PDF standards. The options I’ve selected here are appropriate to a professionally printed document.
These standards don’t apply to my eBook, so I’ll leave these controls at their default, Ignore-it settings. We’ll talk about PDF/X in a future article.