Document Management

PDF is a widespread format for electronic documents. At the end of 2005, PDF/A was approved by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) as a standard for long-term archiving: “A data format based on PDF, known as PDF/A, which provides a mechanism for displaying electronic documents in way that the visual image is preserved over time, independent of the tools and systems used to create, store and reproduce it.“ (Excerpt from ISO 19005-1). Our competence in these areas is in frequent demand from public institutions. We’ve prepared several studies on PDF-related issues for these authorities, applied our knowledge to development projects (e.g. on PDF production from XML data), and designed and created countless electronic PDF forms.

In the early 80’s we extracted text contents stored in electronic memory and word processing typewriter storage in manufacturer-specific storage formats, and converted it to the common word processing formats of the time (DOS Word and WordPerfect). Our in-depth knowledge of internal formats and storage structure is in greater demand than ever before: Our server software – implemented as a simple email server – converts texts between Office data formats, ODF and PDF, and permits the data-technical processing of telefax or scanned documents, using OCR, for example. This frees users from having to install and configure various types of converter software. Our understanding of the internal structures of text processing systems also helps us engineer compatibility between Open Office XML (OOXML) and Open Document Format (ODF).

For the transmission of legacy data too, public institutions rely on our competence and long years of experience. An EU agency just recently had us convert their complete archive of WordPerfect documents (more than 260,000 documents) to the ISO standard OpenXML.

We increasingly use open source tools, also to implement document management projects. So we create collaborative, web-based software solutions based on the open source framework Alfresco for a simplified distribution and administration of documents within closed (defined) user groups.