README: history and motivation

README.md

@@ -54,3 +54,28 @@ Convert 'input.pdf' in PDF/A-1B format and validate the result:
 ```
   ./pdf2archive --validate input.pdf
 ```
+
+## History & Motivation
+This script was born as a necessity, when I had to convert the LaTeX-produced PDF of my MSc Thesis into a PDF/A-1B.
+
+Once upon a time, the delivery of the Thesis had to be done manually, by burning a CD-ROM with the Thesis PDF on it. I don't need to say that it was extremely old-fasioned and inefficient, as you had to deliver the CD-ROM to the secretariat in person. Finally, in 2015, my university decided to activate the online submission of the PDF: you just had to upload your PDF and you were done, completely hassle-free.
+
+Then one year ago, some _enlightened mind_ in whoever knows what administrative office, decided that a regular PDF was not easy enough; so, the university began to require the much more _satanic_ PDF/A-1B. Of course, they had to provide a set of instructions for us mere mortal, so that we could produce valid PDF/A-1B files; and indeed they did, by uploading a [_fantastic document_](http://www.biblioteca.unitn.it/282/tesi-di-laurea). If you took the (click)bait and read the PDF (not PDF/A-1B, eh!) instructions at the previous linked page, you might have noticed the _absolute completeness_ of the information contained in it: there are instructions to transform a PDF into a PDF/A-1B by either using a Windows-only free program (yeah, I know) or an obsolete OpenOffice plugin that doesn't work anymore or _paid_, commercial programs that work at most only on Windows and MacOS. No free, cross-platform alternative because hey, _everyone_ loves Windows! Naturally, you can directly produce a PDF/A-1B version of your Thesis. The document lists some easy instructions to perform a direct export into a PDF/A-1B from either Microsoft Word (or Excel, because there are people who of course write their thesis in Excel) or OpenOffice. Because _everyone_ on Earth, especially people who do Physics or Maths, write their thesis in Microsoft Word... they look _sooo beautiful_, in particular when you have to put footnotes, citations, table of contents, when Word spreads the text in a page in a zebra-style, and when you write those amazing equations in Comic Sans that get rendered as 10 DPI jpeg's. "And people who use LaTeX"? "Latex? What latex? I don't do that kind of dirty sex stuff"! - would say the guy who wrote that document. 
+
+So you could imagine me and my friends, on the last available day for the Thesis delivery, still struggling trying to figure out how to convert. There is a [nice site](https://docupub.com/pdfconvert/) that converts PDF's into PDF/A-1B files, but there are some points:
++ your Thesis gets filled with metadata from that site, which is not nice for an official document
++ the file size limit is 10 Mb, so if you do a more experimental Thesis which is full of images you're out
++ this solution depends on someone else resources; if the site goes down tomorrow, you're in deep s***
++ it only works online, no offline alternative if you're on the move
++ you have to send personal data to an unknown site
++ you don't know what operations are being performed on your file and your data on the other side of the line
+
+By digging around on Google, you can find people saying that you can perform the conversion via Ghostscript by just turning on a couple of switches; unfortunately, this doesn't work (the online system, Esse3, keeps saying that the file is not valid) and the matter is slightly more complicated and poorly documented. The failure in producing a valid PDF/A-1B is connected to the complex set of requirements needed, especially font embedding, metadata and color space. This script is just a collection of all the things one should to in order to obtain (in most of the cases) a valid PDF/A-1B document from a regular PDF file, in the hope that it simplifies all the process. It also contain a [free, open source validator](http://verapdf.org) that can validate the resulting file (this validator was not included in the official instructions I've linked before, which instead point to paid, commercial products).
+
+There are still cases in which this script produces valid PDF/A-1B files which are rejected by the system because they are "too complex" and the validator used by Esse3 (our 80's-style online system programmed by [Topo Gigio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topo_Gigio)) goes in timeout; unfortunately there is no solution that we can implement, as it's a server problem. The suspect is that they're using the commercial version of an [online validator](https://www.pdf-online.com/osa/validate.aspx) (which seems to be the only free one still working), which has the same timeout problem when validating "too complex" PDF files. This small script, instead, shows that
++ you just need a couple of lines to implement a conversion script
++ the university could just require a regular PDF file and perform the conversion with _two_ Ghostscript commands, hassle-free for the students
++ this process would be _free_, as Ghostscript is open-source
++ the inclusion of a validator is trivial, and the _free_, open source validator included here (in contrast to the validator they're using, which is _probably_ a commercial solution) can easily handle "too complex" PDF files without going in timeout
+
+So, now the question is: what is the university still waiting for?