Mail Merge Labeled Generation: Letters Envelopes Form Letter Word Processing Text
Mail Merge Labeled Generation: Letters Envelopes Form Letter Word Processing Text
The most important new feature of the recently released PDF/A-3 standard is
that, unlike PDF/A-2 and PDF/A-1, it allows you to embed any file you like.
Whether this is a good thing or not is the subject of some heated on-line
discussions. But what do we actually mean by embedded files? As it turns out, the
answer to this question isn’t as straightforward as you might think. One of the
reasons for this is that in colloquial use we often talk about “embedded files” to
describe the inclusion of any “non-text” element in a PDF (e.g. an image, a video
or a file attachment). On the other hand, the word “embedded files” in
the PDF standards (including PDF/A) refers to something much more specific,
which is closely tied to PDF‘s internal structure.
Embedded files and embedded file streams
When the PDF standard mentions “embedded files”, what it really refers to is a
specific data structure. PDF has a File Specification Dictionary object, which in its
simplest form is a table that contains a reference to some external file. PDF
1.3 extended this, making it possible to embed the contents of referenced files
directly within the body of the PDF using Embedded File Streams. They are
described in detail in Section 7.11.4 of the PDF Specification (ISO 32000). A File
Specification Dictionary that refers to an embedded file can be identified by the
presence of an EF entry.