This chapter describes BI Publisher's support for PDF specification 1.7 in its processing utilities.
It contains the following sections:
In versions of BI Publisher earlier than 11.1.1.7, the PDF utilities required that all PDF input documents be PDF version 1.4. Starting with the 11.1.1.7 release, users can pass PDF documents of later versions to the BI Publisher PDF utilities.
BI Publisher generates the output PDF version based on the input PDF version as follows:
PDF version 1.4 and earlier generates PDF 1.4
PDF version 1.5 and later generates the same output version as the input version
Note:
The version specification here is referred to as "PDF 1.7," however, there are very few differences between PDF 1.7 and ISO 32000-1. Therefore BI Publisher's support for PDF 1.7 can also be considered as support for ISO 32000-1.
For more information about these standards, see the Adobe website at
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/pdf/pdf_reference.html
and the International Organization for Standardization website at
The BI Publisher utilities that support PDF 1.7 are:
FormProcessor – merges a PDF template with XML data to produce PDF document output.
PDFDocMerger – provides optional processing of PDF files to merge documents, add page numbering, and set watermarks.
PDFSignature – creates signed PDF documents by processing unsigned PDF documents with a signature field name and a password-protected Personal Information Exchange (PFX) file.
This section describes the limitations of BI Publisher's support for the PDF 1.7 standard. It includes the following topics:
Limitations that apply to all the BI Publisher PDF utilities are:
Secured PDF documents cannot be used as input to any BI Publisher PDF utility.
PDF documents generated by BI Publisher do not support most accessibility features.
Unicode passwords are not supported.
PDF utilities may not work properly with input PDFs that contain 3-D artwork and input PDF documents formatted as a presentation (slideshow).
Limitations that apply to the FormProcessor utility are:
XFA Forms (Adobe's XML Forms Architecture) is not supported.
Portable collection (portfolio) is not supported.
Tagged PDF documents will lose tags after processing.
Limitations that apply to the PDFDocMerger and PDFBookBinder utilities are:
The output PDF document version is determined based on the first input PDF document.
XFA Forms (Adobe's XML Forms Architecture) is not supported.
Portable collection (portfolio) is not supported.
Tagged PDF documents will lose tags after merging.
The following objects are preserved in the output, but the navigation panel shows only objects contained in the first input PDF document.
Bookmark
Attachment
Layer
Print characteristics (such as paper selection, handling, page range, copies, and scaling)
Limitations that apply to the PDFSignature utility are:
Object signature is not supported.
Selective encryption of embedded files is not supported.
AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) is not supported.
PDFSignature may not work correctly with the digital signature constraints and certificate constraints described in Section 1.2.5 of the PDF 1.7 specification. For more information about the PDF 1.7 specification, see the Adobe website at