Conversion to PDF/A

[raimondozagami]

Please, i look for a solution to easily convert to PDF/A.
I can use basic syntax of pandoc, but i'm not a software programmer.
I'd like to convert single files, multiple files and choose the versione of PDF/A to comply with.
Thankyou for your attention.
Raimondo Zagami

[jgm]

The manual has some information about generating PDF/A via ConTeXt. See under "Variables for ConTeXt."

[raimondozagami]

Yes, i read it, but i'm not able to write the instructions. Please, could you write the instructions.
I need:

• conversion of a single file
• conversion of multiple files in a folder
• possibility to choose the version (for instance PDF/A 1.b)
• use it on mac and win
  Raimondo Zagami

[jpcirrus]

Yes, it is possible with latex, but only when using the engines lualatex (preferred, and better supported) or pdflatex, and you have to use a custom template. That template can remain identical to default.latex except that the following needs to be inserted at the very beginning of the template (i.e., before $passoptions.latex()$):

\DocumentMetadata{% Activate PDF resource management
  lang=${if(lang)}${lang}${else}en-US${endif},% Change default as appropriate
  pdfversion=${if(pdfversion)}${pdfversion}${else}1.7${endif},% Change default as appropriate
  pdfstandard=${if(pdfstandard)}${pdfstandard}${else}A-3u${endif},% Change default as appropriate
  testphase=new-or-1% Change as appropriate (see documentation)
}

You also have to have the pdfmanagement-testphase package and it's dependencies installed (one of which I remember is tagpdf). All the information you require regarding appropriate settings can be found in the documentation of pdfmanagement-testphase, hyperref-generic (the hyperref driver that is now used), and another document which I can't find right now (EDIT: documentmetadata-support-code) which also provides the various values for the testphase key which specifies the level of tagging support (the one above is minimal and works with most classes and packages).

Compliance of the generated PDF with the standard can be tested at veraPDF.

[iandol]

Typst just added support for PDF/A-2b using --pdf-standard a-2b — and they are working to expand their support to other PDF standards

https://typst.app/blog/2024/typst-0.12/

[jgm]

Great! I tried this with pandoc:

pandoc --pdf-engine=typst --pdf-engine-opt=--pdf-standard=a-2b MANUAL.txt -o m.pdf

and it worked (passed validation with VeraPDF for a-2b level).