Over the years I have had corrupted files of all shapes sizes 
formats.  And corruption has been more of an issue of instability of 
the medium they were on not the format itself. I wouldn't 
characterize PDF as being inherently unstable -- version 
compatibility is a different story.  But PDF/A solves the 
compatibility issue.  So I would still have to respectfully disagree.

The advantage of a PDF/A is:
    * PDF readers are much more ubiquitous than TIFF readers and 
always have been
    * PDF/A can self contain the "image" and text and is therefore 
much more portable
    * Electronic Documents can be "distilled" to PDF/A without having 
to scan saving a heck of a lot of storage capacity
The "bells and whistles" are not part of the PDF/A standard; so that 
maybe a benefit or a drawback depending on ones point of view.  And 
if one is converting from "traditional" PDF to PDF/A there may be 
functionality loss in regards to "bells and whistles".

Now if we are talking non-textual images I would go with TIFF or PNG 
any day, but w/PDF/A and Adobes willingness to make the reference to 
the PDF format freely available we are at the cusp to begin using 
PDF/A as a preservation tool.  I know many people would be shocked to 
hear me make this statement as I have been notoriously anti-PDF in 
the past.  The key to an open standard is adoption and acceptance, we 
already have that with traditional PDF as a de facto standard.  PDF/A 
is an ISO vetted de jure standard, essentially based on a de facto 
standard.  We don't need to sit around waiting for adoption like say 
JPEG2000 or PNG.

I would suggest reviewing some of the resources I put in my last 
missive and check it out for yourselves before dismissing it out of hand.

And as the final kicker -- guess who owns TIFF -- that's right Adobe.

Have a good weekend all -- Dan

At 3/9/2007 03:40 PM Friday, you wrote:
>We were discussing PDF and not PDF/A.
>PDF was an open standard before. The problem with the PDF format is that
>it is just too unstable.
>Adobe is trying to add more bells and whistles to it all the time, which
>requires them to modify the format accordingly.
>A Format that is as volatile as the PDF Format should not be used for
>long-term records storage.
>
>Furthermore you can achieve word context searching with TIFF files also.
>All you need to do is to have a OCR TXT rendition of your TIFF file in
>your EDRMS.
>
>PDF/A is a pretty new standard which I don't have a lot experience with,
>but believe that PDF/A is not as readily available as TIFF 6.0. Imaging
>software's can scan records into a TIFF 6.0 format out of the Box and
>all new computers come with a viewer that can view TIFF 6.0.
>
>TIFF 6.0 is a format that has proven itself over time, meanwhile PDF/A
>has the promise of becoming that format in the future.
>
>For *now* the TIFF 6.0 format seems to be the cheaper more reliable
>format.

Daniel W. Noonan, MLS, CDIA+
Electronic Records Manager/Archivist
University Archives
The Ohio State University
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