Duplicate Author Metatags with PDF/A

[weddige]

I have a document, where I list multiple authors in the meta tags:

  <meta name="author" content="Ben Tester" />
  <meta name="author" content="Max Muster" />

In the default configuration, they are added as a single string (/Author (Ben Tester, Max Muster) in the pdf):

If I activate PDF/A with --pdf-variant=pdf/a-2b, I get the previous string as well as the first author (<dc:creator><rdf:Seq><rdf:li>Ben Tester</rdf:li><rdf:li>Max Muster</rdf:li></rdf:Seq></dc:creator> in the pdf):

In the end this is probably more an issue of Adobe Reader than of weasyprint, but it still looks award.

[weddige]

Without knowing, if this leads to other issues: Not setting /Author (Ben Tester, Max Muster) if <dc:creator> is set, solves the problem:

[liZe]

Hi!

Thanks for the bug report.

In the end this is probably more an issue of Adobe Reader than of weasyprint, but it still looks award.

You’re right, that’s probably a bug in Adobe Reader.

As the /Author tag only accepts a string, we create a string with a comma between the different authors. The dc:creator field accepts a list, that’s why we can put separate fields in it.

If you can find a way to avoid this bug (by using something else than a comma for example) we may include a fix. Otherwise, you should probably report this bug to Adobe 😁.

[weddige]

After playing around, I think I understand the behaviour of Adobe Reader:

If both /Author and <dc:creator> are defined, it shows

• /Author
• <dc:creator>[1:].

This is independent of the content of <dc:creator>[0].

So, the solution to be compatible with Adobe Reader it would be to write only the first author to /Author.

This brings me to another observation:

In the HTML I used the order Ben Tester, Max Muster, however in the PDF it is the other way around: Ben Tester, Max Muster.

[liZe]

So, the solution to be compatible with Adobe Reader it would be to write only the first author to /Author.

I prefer to keep the current behavior, it’s probably better to see all the authors in basic PDF documents even if it means that the field is broken when generating PDF/A documents with multiple authors.

In the HTML I used the order Ben Tester, Max Muster, however in the PDF it is the other way around: Ben Tester, Max Muster.

I can’t reproduce this "problem". Do you have a sample that reliably gives this result?

[liZe]

Please add a comment if there’s anything more we can do about this topic.