Refactored PDF Conformance Architecture

In iText Core 9.2.0 we’re introducing a restructure of the conformance-checking mechanism in the iText kernel package. The aim is to support multiple PDF conformance standards beyond PDF/A, specifically the PDF/UA-1 and PDF/UA-2 accessibility standards.

What has changed?

A new class, PdfConformance was introduced instead of the old PdfAConformance class. This new class serves as an abstraction layer to support multiple PDF Conformance validation strategies. (e.g. PDF/A, PDF/UA).

PdfAConformance is still available for use, as it was before. But instead of acting as a standalone class, it’s now an enum within the context of the PdfConformance class, along with the new PdfUAConformance enum.

What are the benefits?

This change modularizes the conformance validation functionality, improving maintainability and offering a simplified way to add further PDF specification validation further along the road.

Changes for developers

There will be no changes for implemented PDF/A conformance use cases. However, new method calls have been added to support the newly added PDF/UA conformance standard.