[tex-live] [pdftex] PDF 1.5 by default in TL 2010

Karl Berry karl at freefriends.org
Tue Jan 12 01:12:29 CET 2010


    If you want to produce files that conform to ISO standards like PDF/X-3
    (which is widely spread in printing industry) or PDF/X-1a (mainly for
    archiving purposes) files in PDF 1.5 won't pass.

Sure, but as I understand it, pdftex does not now produce output
conformant with those ISO standards, so changing the default PDF version
won't affect the issue.

I surely agree it would be desirable to support those output formats,
but, as I expect you and most people here know, changing the PDF version
is a tiny part of the job.  I can imagine that when PDF/X* is really
supported, a different .fmt will be desirable anyway.

In any case, the reason to switch to 1.5 is to meaningfully reduce
output size in the usual case, which does not involve PDF/X.  It is what
just about every other document production system does these days.


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