ISO 21812-1:2019

Graphic technology — Print product metadata for PDF files — Part 1: Architecture and core requirements for metadata

Scope

The document part metadata in a PDF file that conforms to this document can be used to communicate the intended appearance of print products and their components. Examples of intended use are: direct interpretation within a production process, creation of job tickets such as XJDF, or populating records in an MIS. This document builds on the DPart syntax as specified in ISO 16612‑2 (PDF/VT) and ISO 32000‑2 (PDF 2.0) which is designed for encoding metadata related to pages or groups of pages in PDF files.
NOTE The document part metadata provided in this document applies to individual document parts, whereas XMP metadata typically applies to the scope of the entire document. XMP can apply to the scope of an individual page or part of a page but this usage is very uncommon. Thus, XMP is not applicable for the case where metadata is required for sets of pages such as multiple recipients or binding information. For example, XMP is used within PDF/X for file conformance identification and is also used for additional file level information such as author.
This document defines standardized metadata to:
— provide product intent specifications such as paper media selection and binding information;
— identify the type of product that the content pages are intended to represent (e.g. a brochure, letter or postcard);
— identify the intended recipient of each of the content pages for variable document printing applications.
This document defines a base conformance level that includes the syntax of the metadata framework and the semantics of a core set of metadata.