Date: 2025-06

Reference number of project:

Committee identification: ISO/TC 171/SC 2/WG 8

Secretariat: ANSI

Document management — Portable document format — Part 2: PDF 2.0

AMENDMENT 1

Gestion de documents — Format de document portable — Partie 2: PDF 2.0

AMENDMENT 1

© ISO 2025

All rights reserved. Unless otherwise specified, or required in the context of its implementation, no part of this publication may be reproduced or utilized otherwise in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, or posting on the internet or an intranet, without prior written permission. Permission can be requested from either ISO at the address below or ISO’s member body in the country of the requester.

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Phone: +41 22 749 01 11

Email: copyright@iso.org

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Foreword

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This document was prepared by Technical Committee ISO/TC 171, Document management applications, Subcommittee SC 2, Document file formats, EDMS systems and authenticity of information.

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Document management — Portable document format — Part 2: PDF 2.0

AMENDMENT 1

7.6.5.2 Public-key encryption dictionary

Append the following row to the end of Table 24.

Table 24 — Public-key security handler user access permissions

7.6.7 Unencrypted wrapper document

Delete the last sentence from the third paragraph (immediately above “Table 28 — Entries in an encrypted payload dictionary”).

7.11.3 File specification dictionaries

Modify the first paragraph in the “Value” column of the AFRelationship row in Table 43 as follows:

Table 43 — Entries in a file specification dictionary

13.7.2.2.2 RichMediaActivation dictionary

Append the following row to the end of Table 335:

Table 335 — Entries in a RichMediaActivation dictionary

14.8.4.7.2 General inline level structure types

Insert a new sub-clause heading “14.8.4.7.3 Link elements” below NOTE 1 in sub-clause 14.8.4.7.2 and replace the existing text below NOTE 1 as follows:

14.8.4.7.3 Link elements

Tagged PDF link elements (standard structure type Link) use PDF’s logical structure facilities to establish the association between content items and link annotations, providing functionality comparable to HTML hypertext links. The following items may be children of a link element:

— One or more content items or other ILSEs (except other links).

— Object references (see 14.7.5.3, “PDF objects as content items”) to one or more link annotations associated with the content.

NOTE 1 An SD entry in the GoTo or GoToR action of a Link annotation facilitates linking directly to a target structure element as opposed to just targeting an area on a page.

When a Link structure element describes a span of text to be associated with a link annotation, and that span wraps from the end of one line to the beginning of another, the Link structure element shall include a single object reference that associates the span with the associated link annotation. Further, the link annotation shall use the QuadPoints entry to denote the active areas on the page.

EXAMPLE 1 The Link structure element references a link annotation that includes a QuadPoints entry that boxes the strings “with a” and “link”. That is, the QuadPoints entry contains 16 numbers: the first 8 numbers describe a quadrilateral for “with a”, and the next 8 describe a quadrilateral for “link”.

Here is some text with a
link inside.

NOTE 2 Beginning with PDF 1.7, use of the Link structure element to enclose multiple link annotations on a single page is deprecated.

4 0 obj % Link annotation using QuadPoints to span 2 lines (ISO 32000-2:2020, Tables 166 and 176)
<<
  /Type     /Annot
  /Subtype  /Link
  /P        3 0 R
  /A        << % URI Action (ISO 32000-2:2020, Tables 196 and 210)
    /S    /URI
    /Type /Action
    /URI  (https://pdfa.org/)
  >>
  /Rect     [ 10 77 53 88 ]
  /Contents (Link annotation to PDF Association website)
  /QuadPoints [
    42 83 53 83   53 88 42 88
    10 77 16 77   16 81 10 81
  ]
  /StructParent 1
>>
endobj

EXAMPLE 2 Refer to the following fragment of HTML code, which produces a line of text containing a hypertext link:

<html>
    <body>
        <p>
            Here is some text <a href="https://www.pdfa.org">with a link</a> inside.
        </p>
    </body>
</html>

This code sample shows an equivalent fragment of PDF using a link element, whose text is displayed as blue and underlined. A functional PDF is attached 📎.

5 0 obj
<<
  /Length ...
>>
stream
  BT                          % Begin a text object
    /P << /MCID 0 >> BDC      % Begin marked-content sequence 0 (paragraph)
      0 0 0 rg                % Set nonstroking colour to black
      /FHelv 1 Tf             % Set text font and size
      4 0 0 4 10 84 Tm        % Set text matrix
      (Here is some text ) Tj % Show text preceding link
    EMC                       % End marked-content sequence 0
    /Link << /MCID 1 >> BDC   % Marked-content sequence 1 (link)
      0 0 1 rg                % Blue visually indicates a hyperlink
      4 0 0 4 42 84 Tm        % Set text matrix
      (with a ) Tj            % Show first line of text for link
      -8 -1.5 Td              % Start a new line
      (link) Tj               % Show second line of text for link
    EMC                       % End marked-content sequence 1
    /P << /MCID 2 >> BDC      % Marked-content sequence 2 (paragraph)
      0 0 0 rg                % Set nonstroking colour to black
      ( inside. ) Tj          % Show text following link
    EMC                       % End marked-content sequence 2
  ET                          % End the text object

  /Artifact BMC               % Begin marked content for blue underlined hyperlink
    0 0 1 RG                  % Set stroking colour to blue
    0.2 w                     % Set narrow line width
    42 83 m                   % Move to start a line
    53 83 l                   % Draw the underline segment for line 1
    10 77 m                   % Move to start a line
    16 77 l                   % Draw the underline segment for line 2
    S                         % Stroke the underline
  EMC                         % End marked content (artifact)
endstream
endobj

EXAMPLE 3 This example shows an excerpt from the associated logical structure hierarchy.

10 0 obj % Root element must always be <Document>
<<
  /Type /StructElem
  /S    /Document
  /P    7 0 R          % Parent is structure tree root
  /Pg   3 0 R          % Page 1
  /K    11 0 R         % Kids = only a <paragraph>
>>
endobj

11 0 obj % <P> paragraph structure element
<<
  /Type /StructElem
  /S    /P             % <P> paragraph
  /P    10 0 R         % Parent is <Document>
  /Pg    3 0 R         % Page 1
  /K [                 % Kids:
      0                %   MCID 0 = paragraph
      12 0 R           %   <Link> tag
      2                %   MCID 2 = paragraph
  ]
>>
endobj

12 0 obj % <Link> tag
<<
  /Type /StructElem
  /S    /Link
  /P    11 0 R         % Parent is <P> paragraph
  /Pg    3 0 R         % Page 1
  /K [                 % Kids:
    1                  %  MCID 1 = link
    <<
      /Type /OBJR        % Object reference dictionary (ISO 32000-2:2020, Table 358)
      /Pg   3 0 R        % Page 1
      /Obj  4 0 R        % Link annotation
    >>
  ]
>>
endobj

14.8.6.1 Namespaces for standard structure types and attributes

Replace the entire paragraph above the current NOTE with the following:

To facilitate conversion of documents created against versions of the PDF standard earlier than PDF 2.0, the default standard structure namespace shall be http://iso.org/pdf/ssn. When a structure element does not have a specified namespace, after transitively applying any role map present (see 14.8.6.2, “Role maps and namespaces”), the final element type shall be considered to be within the default standard structure namespace and shall be one of the standard structure types defined in the default standard structure namespace.

14.8.6.2 Role maps and namespaces

Replace the second bullet in the bulleted list with the following:

— they are in the default standard structure namespace (after any role mapping);

14.13.5 Associated files linked to graphics objects

Replace the paragraph below NOTE 2 with the following:

Unlike other types of marked-content tags, the DP or MP marked-content operators shall not be used with the AF tag when that tag is used to refer to an array of file specification dictionaries.

Replace NOTE 3 with the following:

NOTE 3 The combination of a DP or MP operator with an AF tag (when used to refer to an array of file specification dictionaries) is forbidden, as these operators only mark a single point and thus do not enable connections between any specific sequence of content operators and their associated file.

Replace the paragraph below NOTE 3 with the following:

The property list associated with the marked-content shall specify a dictionary with an MCAF entry defining an array of file specification dictionaries (see 7.11.3, “File specification dictionaries”) to which the content is associated, as defined in Table 410. The named resource in the property list (see 14.6.2, “Property lists”) shall specify this dictionary to which the content is associated. The relationship that the Associated Files have to the PDF content is supplied by the AFRelationship key in each file specification dictionary in the array.

Insert a new Table, new NOTE 4, and a new EXAMPLE below the paragraph below NOTE 3, as follows:

NOTE 4 As defined in Table 34 and 14.6.2, “Property Lists”, a marked-content property list is always a dictionary. Furthermore, entries in Associated File file specification dictionaries use an indirect reference to the embedded file stream and, since indirect references are not allowed in content streams, named property resources are always used.

Table 410 — Property list entries for associated files

EXAMPLE

10 0 obj
<<
  /Resources <<
    /Properties <<
      /MF1 <<
        /MCAF [
          << /Type /Filespec /AFRelationship /Data /EF ... >>
          << /Type /Filespec /AFRelationship /Schema /EF ... >>
        ]
      >>
      /MF2 << /MCAF [ ... ] >>
    >>
  >>
>>
stream
  ...
  /AF /MF1 BDC
    ...
  EMC
  ...
endstream
endobj

Replace the second last paragraph with the following:

Although the marked-content tag shall be AF, other applications of marked-content are not precluded from using AF as a tag. The marked-content is connected with Associated Files only if the tag is AF and the named property list is defined according to Table 410. To avoid conflict with other features that use marked-content, such as 14.7, “Logical structure”, where content is to be tagged with source content markers as well as other markers, the other markers should be nested inside the source content markers.

Annex L (normative) Parent-child relationships between the standard structure elements in the standard structure namespace for PDF 2.0

Modify Table Annex L.2 so that Table is now indicated as a valid child of P with a “0..n” relationship and, in the Table section, P is listed as a valid parent with a “0..n” relationship. The supplementary attachments (as PDF 📎 and Open XML spreadsheet 📎 data files) are correspondingly also corrected.

Table Annex L.2 — Parent-child relationships between the standard structure elements in the standard structure namespace for PDF 2.0

Q.2 Page content

Add the following sentence to the end of the last paragraph of Q.2:

Any annotation that has a BM key (PDF 2.0) in the annotation dictionary with a value other than Normal shall be considered to contain transparency (see “Table 166 — Entries common to all annotation dictionaries”).