The “abort-remaining-checks” value appears for every setting. You can set up PDF Checker so that it stops its analysis of a given PDF document if it encounters a condition that you select. This saves processing time; PDF Checker abandons the current document if it finds a critical error. If you are running PDF Checker as a batch process, it will move on to scan the next PDF file in the directory.

Two conditions will cause the PDF Checker review process to stop processing immediately whether the “abort-remaining-checks” condition is turned on or not.

• unable-to-open. The document has an invalid format and cannot be opened, or it is not really a PDF file, or the file is named in the command line statement but does not appear in the directory.
• password-protected. The document requires a password to open and view, but the password was not provided with the command line statement.

A third condition might cause the review process to stop immediately if the PDF document cannot be repaired.

• damaged. The document is corrupted and PDF Checker cannot open the file.

PDF Checker includes a document repair feature. If PDF Checker finds it cannot open a PDF document, it will run the repair process for the file, and store an updated version of the file in memory with those changes applied, but without changing the file itself. A similar feature in Adobe Acrobat allows a user to save a repaired document and apply those repairs. PDF Checker does not make any changes to the initial document or allow the saving of a repaired document.  Other Datalogics products can be used for that.

If PDF Checker still can’t open the PDF document after repairing it, the system will stop processing the document and mark it as damaged. If PDF Checker can open the repaired file, it will run through its normal review process, but the review might not complete successfully. If one of the reviews fails, PDF Checker will stop processing the document, and it will only report on the reviews that completed. For example, if PDF Checker can identify and list the fonts in a repaired PDF document but fails when seeking to process the images in that document, checks made during processing images will be reported as aborted.

Suppose you set the “abort-remaining-checks” value to “on” for the “contains-annots-without-normal-appearances” condition, like this:

        "contains-annots-without-normal-appearances": {
            "check": "on",
            "report-as-error": "off",
            "report-message": "Contains annotations without default normal appearances.
                               These may not be displayed correctly in all PDF viewers",
            "abort-remaining-checks": "on"

In this example, the first time PDF Checker finds annotations with non-normal appearances in a PDF document, it stops all further processing for that document. Since PDF Checker can run multi-threaded, however, and thus complete multiple checks at one time, the actual remaining checks that are not processed can vary, depending on when the abort signal is received. For example, one thread could be checking fonts in a PDF document while another is looking at images. The thread checking fonts might not be finished, or where it breaks off might vary from one PDF document to another, when PDF Checker abandons the PDF file. As a result, the output results might vary, too. The check that causes the process to abort is shown in the output report.