NewFormat AB

PDF standards make the world work

Lead the way in quality and efficiency with callas pdfaPilot.
Your clients will notice the difference!

Here’s why callas pdfaPilot is the game-changer your business needs:

• Quality Control:
  Ensure your PDFs are print-ready with robust preflight capabilities,
  reducing costly errors and enhancing customer satisfaction.


• Workflow Automation:
  Streamline repetitive tasks like preflighting and color conversion,
  boosting productivity and cutting turnaround times.


• Versatility:
  Support for a wide range of PDF standards and
  customizable profiles, to meet diverse project needs.


• Cost-Effective:
  Minimize errors and waste,
  saving on material and labor costs.


• Integration:
  Seamlessly integrates with industry-standard software,
  enhancing collaboration with partners and clients.


• Compliance:
  Meets all major PDF standards,
  like ISO PDF/A and PDF/UA,
  ensuring top-quality outputs.


• Future-Proof:
  Regular updates keep you at the cutting edge of technology.

News - New key features in callas pdfaPilot

• News - New key features in callas pdfapilot




• callas software blog



• callas pdfaPilot supports ISO PDF/A-4, PDF/X-6 and PDF/VT-3



• callas pdfaPilot converts files to both PDF/A-4 and PDF/X-6 simultaneously,
  and take advantage of improvements to PDF/A conversion for fillable forms.



• callas pdfaPilot supports PDF/UA,
  the ISO Standard (ISO 14289-1) for accessible PDF



• callas pdfaPilot Desktop comes with powerful PDF tools for free!

• No license activation or other obligations.
  These tools provide experienced users and developers with
  a wide range of information about the internal structure of
  PDF files that make them easier to process.



• Full text recognition included (OCR) for over 100 languages



• callas pdfaPilot can be used as an application for

• Robotic Process Automation (RPA)




• The QuickFix Engine integrated into pdfaPilot also enables
  very fast PDF processing, as well as scaling, sorting and deleting pages.



• callas pdfaPilot supports the standard data model for e-invoices:

• the Factur-X / ZUGFeRD 2.2 / XRECHNUNG standard




• Compatible with the veraPDF project
• callas pdfaPilot is since v7 fully compatible with the veraPDF project
  currently being promoted by the European Union.




• callas License Server supports callas pdfaPilot

• A dynamic way of licensing processing capacity services,
  based on the need of peak performance,
  on Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure or others.



• callas pdfaPilot is also available in the cloud or as a
  web services for automated PDF editing:

• See Actino Document Processing Services (DPS)




See also:

• "Do PDF/A and Enterprise Content Management Systems (ECM)
  Complement Each Other (Perfectly)?"

callas pdfaPilot
Tools to convert documents to
the PDF/A Standard for Long-Term Archiving

Conversion of documents to PDF/A

PDF/A
The recommended document format
for long-term preservation of digital documents

PDF/A is the recommended document file format of choice for
long-term document archiving and preservation and guarantee that
documents will be readable and reusable over a long period of time.

PDF/A-1, PDF/A-2 and PDF/A-3 are all complementing PDF formats
and ISO Standards (ISO 19005-1, 19005-2 and 19005-3)
used for long-term archiving of digital documents.




callas pdfaPilot - Tools converting documents to PDF/A

callas pdfaPilot are solutions for conversion of PDF documents or
native (born digital) documents and emails with attachments into
robust, searchable PDF/A files for long-term archiving.

callas pdfaPilot provides dynamic technical preflight/validation and
correction, and optimization of PDF files for document management,
document archiving/e-archiving and long-term preservation.




Server-based automation of
conversion and validation in one go

callas pdfaPilot facilitates long-term e-archiving for enterprises,
public authorities and agencies, organizations and others
regardless of size and business.

In principle, it is advisable to keep all documents in one format,
and PDF is the first choice here as the lowest common denominator
for digitally generated or paper-based documents.

In order to relieve employees of the burden of conversion and at
the same time ensure that all PDF/A files are of a consistently high quality,
decision-makers should rely on server-based solutions that include both
conversion and validation and also provide features that automate
the processes surrounding the processing of PDFs:




Benefits of centralised server-based
conversion to PDF/A

Dietrich von Seggern, Managing Director callas software,
explains why you should not leave the generation of PDF/A files
to individual staff members:

• Are you leaving document archiving to chance? (October 19, 2021)

What callas pdfaPilot can do

callas pdfaPilot turns all kinds of PDFs into PDF/A files according to
ISO Standards PDF/A-1, PDF/A-2, PDF/A-3, PDF/A-4, PDF/UA and PDF/X

Typical PDF/A, PDF/UA and PDF/X documents

• PDFs created in Office applications


• e-mails with attachments


• interactive forms


• invoices / e-Invoices


• construction drawings


• technical documentation


• presentations


• newspapers


• books



callas pdfaPilot converts native digital office documents created with
Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Publisher, Visio, Project,
Apache OpenOffice, LibreOffice, Pages (macOS only),
PostScript and EPS, PNG, JPG and TIFF images into
archive-ready PDF/A files.

Non-compliant PDF files can easily be fixed
and saved as valid PDF/A documents.

callas pdfaPilot takes care of
quality, safety, speed and efficiency

Whenever PDF files need to be prepared on a large scale
callas pdfaPilot takes care of quality, safety, speed and efficiency:

• automate and standardize output processes


• care for quality, safety, speed and efficiency


• provide fully PDF compliant files


• increase productivity


• reduce errors


• validate and correct inaccuracies for compliance with
  the PDF/UA standard for universally accessible PDF




Practical use of callas pdfaPilot:

• Typical use cases, hands-on exercises and tutorials:

• checking and correcting PDF Documents / Prelight


• preparing documents for archival


• dynamic workflows dynamic using variables



callas pdfaPilot is compatible with Adobe® Acrobat® DC
(in fact it uses the same rock-solid PDF/A technology),
but in addition allows you to automate and batch process PDF files.

Related Products:

• callas pdfaPilot Desktop




• callas pdfaPilot Server




• callas pdfaPilot CLI




• callas pdfaPilot SDK

callas pdfaPilot - Solves Long-Term Archiving Challenges




Long-term preservation challenges for archives

Electronic archives must prove electronic documents are authentic,
reliable, complete, unaltered, and usable across time.

Make documents and emails last a lifetime

In many environments, there are regulatory requirements that
all communication regarding specific topics has to be archived for
a certain period of time.
How long that is can differ widely, from a few years to
multiple tens of years, or even for all eternity.

The format of choice for archiving is defined in
the ISO standard PDF/A ("PDF for Archiving").

This ISO standard defines four different PDF/A versions and
callas pdfaPilot can automatically convert all of documents and
emails into the PDF/A flavor required for your purposes.
Additional job information (metadata) is fully supported and
the solution is configurable enough to let it adapt to your workflow;
instead of the other way around.

Archiving documents is a critical operation of modern workflows;
for that reason callas pdfaPilot has been extensively tested
and complies with the ISO standards as verified with
the veraPDF test corpus.
The fact that the very same technology is used in the markets
de facto standard, Adobe Acrobat, is testament to its quality.

Archiving typical office documents

The best way to have good PDF/A files is to
properly create them to begin with.
For this, callas pdfaPilot can automatically convert
Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Project,
Publisher and Visio files into quality PDF files for you.

Simply drag them on the document window of
callas pdfaPilot Desktop and the conversion
takes place in the best possible way.
Apache OpenOffice and LibreOffice documents are
fully supported too, and on macOS Pages and Keynote
of course work as well.

Using the integrated Adobe engine, callas pdfaPilot even does
quality conversion of EPS and PostScript files for you,
without requiring Adobe Acrobat Distiller to be installed.

Email archiving

These days,
emails are an essential part of
business communication in most organizations.

Many countries have laws and regulations around the archival of
such communication, either to be used in potential future litigation
or as part of sound accounting practices.

Because emails are usually handled by email servers with limited
storage capacities, there are no guarantees that an email you
receive today will still be on the server ten years from now.

When you download the email from your server it is possibly
converted into the proprietary format of the email client, and
there is no guarantee that you will have such a client in the future.

In addition, there are attachments to the emails that require a
proper viewer for all file formats that may occur here.

Luckily callas pdfaPilot lets you store these emails including
all attachments in a PDF/A format that will be available and
readable many years from now.

But even in environments where such regulatory guidelines don’t apply,
there are good reasons to archive emails.

In our modern society an amazing amount of business intelligence
is captured in emails. Being able to maintain that information in a
structured way and in the same format that is used for other
documents and being able to including emails and their
attachments efficiently will only become more important.

For more on secure archiving of emails in the PDF/A format,
we will have to deep dive in what an email consists of:

• Blog: Emails for eternity

callas pdfaPilot supports PDF/UA,
the ISO Standard (ISO-14289-1) for accessible PDF

Accessibility is important for digital PDF documents to ensure that
people who need to use assistive technology (such as screen readers)
can access and assimilate the content of these documents.

In addition, local laws and regulations in many countries provide
that PDF files must be accessible to everyone in the society.

As a result, checking against the ISO standard PDF/UA,
the ISO standard that governs what is an accessible PDF file,
has gained importance for service providers, governments and
enterprise customers alike.

callas software provides a number of software tools that support
the PDF/UA standard for digital PDF accessibility.

A successful validation of a PDF document against PDF/UA-1,
always requires the PDF document to pass at least two stages of
validation before the document is published or shared with others:

1. a programmatic syntax test,
   which can be performed by a trusted software, and


2. an interactive semantic test,
   manually carried out by a human.

While callas pdfaPilot is a commercial tool,
the PDF/UA verification part is always free to use and
includes help with the human verification part as well,
by converting the PDF document into an HTML representation
(See "Man versus Machine" below).

• Checking for universal accessibility

Making sure PDF files are according to the PDF/UA standard
for universal accessibility is done easily with
the Preflight feature in callas pdfaPilot.

The solution contains quality control profiles that contain all
the rules for PDF/UA and can verify them in processed PDF files.

This provides a first idea of whether the PDF documents
at least follow the basic rules and implement the necessary
constructs for accessibility.

It checks whether all content in the document is tagged,
whether images have alternate descriptions,
whether a language identification is used for all text, etc.…

• Man versus Machine

While most other quality control processes
can be entirely done using computer software,
this is much more difficult for PDF/UA.

The PDF/UA accessibility standard for example states
that all images must have a proper description.
Of course software can check that a description is available,
but is it really good enough for someone who cannot see the image?

For this reason, the callas solutions also provide functionality
such as the conversion of PDF/UA into color-coded HTML which
can be used by a human to easy check that document structure
was applied correctly, that all image descriptions make sense,
and so on.

Click picture to view and verify
structure tags of a tagged PDF document.
This is a free/no-cost feature in
callas pdfaPilot, pdfToolbox and pdfGoHTML.

This feature is available not only in the main callas pdfaPilot solution,
but also in callas pdfGoHTML, a free and separate plug-in for
Adobe Acrobat DC; making it possible for everyone to quickly
evaluate the quality of the tagging in an accessible PDF document.

Thanks to its unique checking feature for tagging structure in a PDF file
callas pdfaPilot also offers optimized exporting to PDF/UA.

• Not Restricted to PDF

The input documents to create PDF/UA compatible
PDF files are often not PDF files.

For that reason, the callas solutions also support
the conversion of other file formats into PDF.
This is supported for Microsoft Office documents,
Apache Open Office and LibreOffice documents,
various image file formats and emails.

After conversion to PDF, the documents can then be further
made compliant with the appropriate PDF/UA version.

• Export of tagged PDF to EPUB

callas pdfaPilot lets you take advantage of PDF tagging
in a very different area as well:
The tagging structure can be used in order to
automatically create EPUB files from PDF.

This PDF to EPUB feature converts PDFs into eBook files
that can immediately be used on mobile devices such as
smartphones or tablets.

For more on PDF/UA standards:

• Blog: Are you accessible?

Use the right PDF standard for e-archiving:

• Learn more about all ISO Standards based on PDF technology here

How do you choose between variants of PDF/A standards:
PDF/A-1, PDF/A-2, PDF/A-3 or PDF/A-4?
(callas software blog, March 15, 2023)

• Guide: How to choose between variants of PDF/A standards:
  PDF/A-1, PDF/A-2, PDF/A-3 or PDF/A-4

How PDF/A-2 and PDF/A-4
are better than PDF/A-1 (2021)

callas software presents advantages with PDF/A-2 and PDF/A-4 vs PDF/A-1;
to avoid problems in PDF/A-1 conversion:

• How PDF/A-2 and PDF/A-4 are better than PDF/A-1

(This is a YouTube recording (14:40) from PDF Days Online 2021)

• callas pdfaPilot -
  "Convert documents and emails to make them last a lifetime" - Flyer (pdf)





• callas pdfaPilot - "Convert email to PDF" - Flyer (pdf)





• callas PDF Internals - Creating a Simple PDF, Fonts Explained (pdf)





• callas pdfaPilot™ User Manual (pdf)




• callas pdfaPilot™ User Manual (online)

callas pdfaPilot Self-Training

callas pdfaPilot and its sister product callas pdfToolbox
shares the same concepts, basic architecture and many features.

Below self-training for users of callas pdfToolbox is
applicable and recommended also for users of callas pdfaPilot.

This PDF-based self-pace training help users fully
understand and utilize the power of callas pdfToolbox.

The training material is focused on profile creation and
includes exercises with solutions and explanations.

Simply download the following PDF training manual,
open it in a PDF viewer and you are good to go:

• callas pdfToolbox Desktop Training Manual

callas pdfaPilot software can be obtained via license acquisition or renting.
License is per desktop/laptop and unlimited number of documents, or
per server and unlimited number of users and unlimited number of documents.

For 5pcs or more of desktop licenses volume discount apply!

Interesting?

• Contact NewFormat for a quote on callas pdfaPilot

• 2021: Debeka, Germany

Debeka archives emails in compliance with ISO rules thanks to callas pdfaPilot.

The Debeka Group is one of the five biggest players in the insurance and
building-society savings sector in Germany, offering a wide range of
insurance and financial services.

Now, the group is introducing a central document conversion solution which will
process emails and their attachments as they are readied for long-term archiving.
Debeka uses PDF/A as its chosen file format.


Every day, it now converts an average of approximately 2,400 emails and
their associated attachments into the ISO standard for document archiving.

Longer-term, Debeka plans to expand the solution step by step to cover
additional archiving processes. In total, the group expects that by the final phase,
it will need to convert 300,000 to 400,000 documents into PDF/A every day.

Integrator: actino software, Germany, (also cooperating partner to NewFormat).

For more details, please see:

• Central document conversion and archiving of emails
  in compliance with ISO rules, PDF/A-1b and PDF/A-2,
  at the Debeka Group

or contact NewFormat.






• 2019: Beuth Verlag

Beuth Verlag trusts callas software for quality assurance of PDF/A files.
callas pdfaPilot and callas pdfToolbox ensure that the DIN standards published
by Beuth Verlag comply with the ISO standards and are therefore suitable
for long-term archiving.

At the same time, a high degree of automation has significantly reduced
the amount of manual work required.
Beuth Verlag, a subsidiary of DIN, the German Institute for Standardization,
distributes national and international standards and develops specialized
publications for industries, scientific research, trade, the service sector,
academic studies and crafts.

For more details, please see:


• Quality assurance of PDF/A files at Beuth Verlag

or contact NewFormat.





• 2023: Malmö University, Sweden


• 2023: University of Eastern Finland, Finland


• 2023: Verified Global AB, Sweden


• 2022: Wellspect AB, Mölndal, Sweden


• 2019: University of Turku, Finland


• 2018: Tampere University, Finland


• 2018: Nobel Media AB / Nobel Prize Outreach AB, Stockholm, Sweden


• 2017: Dentsply IH AB, Mölndal, Sweden


• 2016: ProReNata AB, Stockholm, Sweden


• 2016: University of Skövde, School of Informatics, Sweden


• 2014: The Centre for Business History / Centrum för Näringslivshistoria, Sweden


• 2013: Region- and City Archives of Göteborg, Sweden


• 2013: Region Västra Götaland, Sweden




• 2013: callas pdfaPilot integration with Alfresco ECM (Pressrelease)

Integrator: Redpill Linpro (Göteborg, Sweden):

• Download from GitHub - Alfresco converter for callas pdfaPilot




• 2013: Mercedes-Benz Schweiz AG, Switzerland:

Fully automatic conversion to PDF/A with callas pdfaPilot SDK
for electronic longterm archiving - Datasheet (pdf)





• 2012: The National Archives of Sweden, Sweden




• 2012: Rosendahls, Denmark, print producer for public sector:

Conversion of office documents to PDF/A with callas pdfaPilot,
including PDF tagging using axaio MadeToTag to make PDF content
accessible for all - Datasheet (pdf)






• 2010: Chamber of Commerce, Italy:

Document/Forms conversion and validation for PDF/A
with callas pdfaPilot - Datasheet (pdf)






• 2010: Chamber of Commerce, Italy:

Validation with callas pdfaPilot of deeds deposited with
the Companies' Register - Datasheet (pdf)






• 2010: EU Publications Office, Luxembourg:

Strategic Decision: Publish only in PDF/A format.
Converted 11 million paper pages with callas pdfaPilot
to digital PDF/A documents for long-term archiving
in its digital library/e-archive - Datasheet (pdf)