My e-Thesis submission is required to be in PDF/A-1b format, and I'm having difficulty producing output that meets this standard using LaTeX.
I have successfully typeset a chapter using dvips
to produce a PostScript file, which can then be converted to PDF/A using Adobe Distiller (Acrobat Pro v8.1.2), BUT with the following issues:
- if I use
hyperref
with coloured links, the conversion fails, because the PS file is not PDF/A-compliant (see below) - if I turn on
draft
mode inhyperref
, the resulting PS file can be successfully output to PDF/A using Adobe Distiller, but then I get an error, sometimes 2, while typesetting the bibliography (generated with BibTeX andnatbib
using a custom bibliography style)
For 1) I have seen references to this known issue: hyperlinks are not incompatible with PDF/A per se, but hyperref
does not include all the flags required for PDF/A compliance:
http://tug.org/mailman/htdig/pdftex/2008-January/007522.html
I tried editing hyperref.sty
as suggested, but this did not seem to work for me (either when typesetting using pdftex
, or through dvips
). Acrobat still complained about missing Print and Annot flags for each link (citation and cross-references).
I can live with 2) for the official version (no links, but at least it will be 'archive-quality'). Nevertheless, the errors are incredibly annoying. Each bibliographic entry produces this error:
Argument of \hyper@anchorstart has an extra }
and sometimes also:
Paragraph ended before \hyper@anchorstart was complete.
These errors never happen when typesetting through pdflatex
, even in draft mode. I need to produce a PS file for PDF/A-1b conversion, but these errors are a huge pain.
I can't fully disable hyperref, because I use the \autoref{}
macro a lot, and I would rather not have to replace all those manually.
I also tried using the pdfx
package (using the pdflatex
driver), but got some strange errors very early on in the typesetting run:
/usr/local/texlive/2011/texmf-dist/tex/latex/pdfx/pdfx.sty:121: Use of \getTZh
doesn't match its definition.
<inserted text> D:20121114223403-
05'00'
l.121 \expandafter\convertDate\pdfcreationdate
I hope there is enough information above for people to suggest alternatives, or ways to fix the errors. I haven't put together a MWE, but I could probably throw one together if it would help.
Thanks for any help you can offer.
I am using TexLive 2011 on a Mac (OS X 10.6.8), document processing in TeXShop using simpdftex, Version 20070809
or
pdfTeX, Version 3.1415926-2.3-1.40.12
Best Answer
I'm not sure if an answer is still of interest. Anyway:
1) I would strongly advise to use the pdfx package:
2) The error in the pdfx package is caused by the way how the timestamp is put together. Depending on your timezone (e.g. UTC+1, UTC-1, etc) you have a different sign there. This causes the issue.
You therefore need to put the pdfx.sty in your working directory and need to adjust that specific line accordingly:
...
Alternatively, you may change the timezone of your system.
3) pdfx automatically loads the hyperref package, too. If you want to have a customized hyperref setup, you can use:
In addition to that, you need to provide a color profile and a valid xmp file. Information on this can be found in the pdfx manual. This solution relies on pdftex.
I'm not aware of any solution using dvips.