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(Like lots of things, this news is a few weeks old.)

Indy software developers, meet the ISO:

The new standard, ISO 32000-1, Document management – Portable document format – Part 1: PDF 1.7, is based on the PDF version 1.7 developed by Adobe. This International Standard supplies the essential information needed by developers of software that create PDF files (conforming writers), software that reads existing PDF files and interprets their contents for display and interaction (conforming readers), and PDF products that read and/or write PDF files for a variety of other purposes (conforming products).

And pay: CHF370—about the same in US$—for (a PDF of) the newly minted 747-page “ISO 32000-1:2008” standard, which Adobe offers for free (as several PDFs).

We need a new name for “openness” that costs.

Update: We have it: “Acrobat 9” with Flash support, for which we will pay dearly. Back when, some NYT poobah—a Sulzberger? Frankel?—on seeing USA Today for the first time, is said to have said, “Now we’ve come full circle—TV you can wrap your fish in.”