Hello, since ConTeXt supports form fields in PDFs, I wonder whether the fields for digital signatures are available as well. If not, please consider this a feature request/wish :-) I received an internal document some time ago that represented a form and was separated into three parts. Part one was to be filled out by the employee (in this case: me). Under this part was a signature field I could click which made Adobe Reader prompt for a digital certificate. After I selected that, information about this certificate appeared inside that form field I just clicked. The other form fields were automatically locked afterwards. If I wanted to change them, I would have to remove my signature. Parts two and three were similar, but meant for management. They needed to sign my request which in turn locked their edit fields. So in other words: I would like to create such forms with ConTeXt :-) I hate these work flows where people are told to "print out form x, sign it and send the scanned copy via email" instead of just signing it digitally. It would also come in handy for technical and business documents that need to be signed by the customer (for example an Interface Document, System Design, Use Case, whatever). I hope that is not completely out of scope for ConTeXt and not too hard to implement. Otherwise I guess I won't see that feature for a long time. Thanks anyway; at least for reading this :-) -- Best Regards, Andreas
I'm replying off-list. I think that this might be on the list of forbidden features (one would have to pay to adobe to be able to allow signing document with TeX). Mojca On Mon, Mar 19, 2012 at 10:27, Andreas Schneider wrote:
Hello,
since ConTeXt supports form fields in PDFs, I wonder whether the fields for digital signatures are available as well. If not, please consider this a feature request/wish :-)
I'm not sure about it, but I'm tempted to believe that digitally signing PDFs might be one of "forbidden" functionality that requires you to buy a licence for Acrobat. Martin Schröder usually posts this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_LiveCycle_Reader_Extensions I have found this article, but I'm not sure if it is really legal: http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/14488/E-signing-PDF-documents-with-iText... Maybe we need a FAQ entry about PDF features somewhere on wiki (or at any other place). Mojca
On Monday, March 19, 2012, at 16:41 Mojca Miklavec wrote:
I'm replying off-list. I think that this might be on the list of forbidden features (one would have to pay to adobe to be able to allow signing document with TeX).
Mojca
On Mon, Mar 19, 2012 at 10:27, Andreas Schneider wrote:
Hello,
since ConTeXt supports form fields in PDFs, I wonder whether the fields for digital signatures are available as well. If not, please consider this a feature request/wish :-)
I'm not sure about it, but I'm tempted to believe that digitally signing PDFs might be one of "forbidden" functionality that requires you to buy a licence for Acrobat. Martin Schröder usually posts this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_LiveCycle_Reader_Extensions
I have found this article, but I'm not sure if it is really legal:
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/14488/E-signing-PDF-documents-with-iText...
Maybe we need a FAQ entry about PDF features somewhere on wiki (or at any other place).
Mojca
That's too bad, although I can see Adobe's reasoning. I thought/was hoping that it was a simply not-yet-implemented feature and not something Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader specific. Well, it was worth a shot. Anyway for signing PDFs myself I still use and prefer JSignPDF: http://jsignpdf.sourceforge.net/ That is really neat and supports a lot of very helpful features (like visible signatures). It's just that it isn't a solution for general forms that others should sign, since not all of them are technically versed or willing to install some third party program. That would have been a good use case for ready-made PDF forms with signature fields. Thanks for your answer! -- Best Regards, Andreas
I'm replying off-list. I think that this might be on the list of forbidden features (one would have to pay to adobe to be able to allow signing document with TeX).
Mojca
On Mon, Mar 19, 2012 at 10:27, Andreas Schneider wrote:
Hello,
since ConTeXt supports form fields in PDFs, I wonder whether the fields for digital signatures are available as well. If not, please consider this a feature request/wish :-)
I'm not sure about it, but I'm tempted to believe that digitally signing PDFs might be one of "forbidden" functionality that requires you to buy a licence for Acrobat. Why ? As long it is described in the ISO standard, it can be implemented in mkiv (easily is another question). Martin Schröder usually posts this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_LiveCycle_Reader_Extensions
On Mon, Mar 19, 2012 at 4:41 PM, Mojca Miklavec
On Mon, Mar 19, 2012 at 17:51, luigi scarso wrote:
I'm not sure about it, but I'm tempted to believe that digitally signing PDFs might be one of "forbidden" functionality that requires you to buy a licence for Acrobat. Why ? As long it is described in the ISO standard, it can be implemented in mkiv (easily is another question).
As I said: I'm not sure whether or not it is legal to implement it or not. There seem to be two separate issues: (a) creating a document that others users will be able to fill in and sign (b) signing your own document Martin usually knows the legal issues better. I'm not sure about the exact legal state and I'm not sure where to check it without getting lost in "hundreds" of pages of EULA or other documents, but (b) is described in PDF Reference Manual (http://wwwimages.adobe.com/www.adobe.com/content/dam/Adobe/en/devnet/pdf/pdf...) in Chapter 12 and cannot be any more complicated to implement than all other PDF features that Hans, Taco or Hartmut ever implemented. Out of curiosity: is inability to create password-protected PDF files with pdfTeX/LuaTeX due to legal issues or due to nobody caring enough to implement it? Mojca
On 19-3-2012 22:08, Mojca Miklavec wrote:
On Mon, Mar 19, 2012 at 17:51, luigi scarso wrote:
I'm not sure about it, but I'm tempted to believe that digitally signing PDFs might be one of "forbidden" functionality that requires you to buy a licence for Acrobat. Why ? As long it is described in the ISO standard, it can be implemented in mkiv (easily is another question).
As I said: I'm not sure whether or not it is legal to implement it or not.
There seem to be two separate issues: (a) creating a document that others users will be able to fill in and sign (b) signing your own document Martin usually knows the legal issues better. I'm not sure about the exact legal state and I'm not sure where to check it without getting lost in "hundreds" of pages of EULA or other documents, but (b) is described in PDF Reference Manual (http://wwwimages.adobe.com/www.adobe.com/content/dam/Adobe/en/devnet/pdf/pdf...) in Chapter 12 and cannot be any more complicated to implement than all other PDF features that Hans, Taco or Hartmut ever implemented.
sure, it's just that I never needed something like that
Out of curiosity: is inability to create password-protected PDF files with pdfTeX/LuaTeX due to legal issues or due to nobody caring enough to implement it?
it's not worth the trouble. Afaik it's a second pass issue and would complicate the code much. Just use qpdf to do it ... pretty fast. Hans ----------------------------------------------------------------- Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands tel: 038 477 53 69 | voip: 087 875 68 74 | www.pragma-ade.com | www.pragma-pod.nl ----------------------------------------------------------------
On Mon, Mar 19, 2012 at 23:12, Hans Hagen wrote:
On 19-3-2012 22:08, Mojca Miklavec wrote:
Out of curiosity: is inability to create password-protected PDF files with pdfTeX/LuaTeX due to legal issues or due to nobody caring enough to implement it?
it's not worth the trouble. Afaik it's a second pass issue and would complicate the code much.
Just use qpdf to do it ... pretty fast.
If qpdf exists it is probably not a legal issue to do password protection then. But from the same perspective ... one first needs PDF to be (almost) finished before being able to sign it. One needs to read as-good-as the whole PDF, read the certificate from somewhere on the disk and then sign with that certificate. If certificate is password-protected, one also needs to provide the password somehow. The usecase would be sending documents to officials (proving that the document really comes from the person claiming the ownership). But it is also true that in principle one can sign emails with PDF attachments. It is not the same, but it comes close. Another usecase could be, say, sending invoices to clients. We have a company that sells crappy software for signing PDFs and XML for over 1000 EUR per version per browser per OS (each new version for each supported browser on a single OS costs that much; and they have a lot of clients). And of course it never works since of course it only supports Mac OS X 10.6 (10.7 still doesn't work), on Windows only IE 7 or Firefox 3.6 (latest Firefox won't work and it is awfully difficult to find the old versions), on Linux probably a similar story (never tried). And that is the only possible way to send any document to the government. On the other hand they could just as well have used some standard tool and it would work out of the box. So much about signing ... Mojca
On 20-3-2012 20:23, Mojca Miklavec wrote:
On Mon, Mar 19, 2012 at 23:12, Hans Hagen wrote:
On 19-3-2012 22:08, Mojca Miklavec wrote:
Out of curiosity: is inability to create password-protected PDF files with pdfTeX/LuaTeX due to legal issues or due to nobody caring enough to implement it?
it's not worth the trouble. Afaik it's a second pass issue and would complicate the code much.
Just use qpdf to do it ... pretty fast.
If qpdf exists it is probably not a legal issue to do password protection then.
Why? Hans ----------------------------------------------------------------- Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands tel: 038 477 53 69 | voip: 087 875 68 74 | www.pragma-ade.com | www.pragma-pod.nl -----------------------------------------------------------------
Le mardi 20 mars 2012 à 20:23 +0100, Mojca Miklavec a écrit :
On Mon, Mar 19, 2012 at 23:12, Hans Hagen wrote:
On 19-3-2012 22:08, Mojca Miklavec wrote:
Out of curiosity: is inability to create password-protected PDF files with pdfTeX/LuaTeX due to legal issues or due to nobody caring enough to implement it?
it's not worth the trouble. Afaik it's a second pass issue and would complicate the code much.
Just use qpdf to do it ... pretty fast.
If qpdf exists it is probably not a legal issue to do password protection then.
You mean strong encryption? Some countries, regimes I should rather say, are not in favour of such... Sad fact, IMHO. Signing a document digitally, should never be much of an issue, in your mentioned legal context, though. Well, needs to be honoured by the receiving party... but... hey, make regimes modern ! :) Cheers, mh
But from the same perspective ... one first needs PDF to be (almost) finished before being able to sign it. One needs to read as-good-as the whole PDF, read the certificate from somewhere on the disk and then sign with that certificate. If certificate is password-protected, one also needs to provide the password somehow.
The usecase would be sending documents to officials (proving that the document really comes from the person claiming the ownership). But it is also true that in principle one can sign emails with PDF attachments. It is not the same, but it comes close. Another usecase could be, say, sending invoices to clients.
We have a company that sells crappy software for signing PDFs and XML for over 1000 EUR per version per browser per OS (each new version for each supported browser on a single OS costs that much; and they have a lot of clients). And of course it never works since of course it only supports Mac OS X 10.6 (10.7 still doesn't work), on Windows only IE 7 or Firefox 3.6 (latest Firefox won't work and it is awfully difficult to find the old versions), on Linux probably a similar story (never tried). And that is the only possible way to send any document to the government. On the other hand they could just as well have used some standard tool and it would work out of the box. So much about signing ...
Mojca ___________________________________________________________________________________ If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki!
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2012/3/20 Mojca Miklavec
If qpdf exists it is probably not a legal issue to do password protection then.
Of course.
But from the same perspective ... one first needs PDF to be (almost) finished before being able to sign it. One needs to read as-good-as the whole PDF, read the certificate from somewhere on the disk and then sign with that certificate. If certificate is password-protected, one also needs to provide the password somehow.
You can technically sign only parts (IIRC streams) of a PDF.
government. On the other hand they could just as well have used some standard tool and it would work out of the box. So much about signing ...
gpg is free. So is jpdfsign. See also http://wiki.cacert.org/PdfSigning Best Martin
On 19-3-2012 16:41, Mojca Miklavec wrote:
I'm replying off-list. I think that this might be on the list of forbidden features (one would have to pay to adobe to be able to allow signing document with TeX).
Is this much different from https certificates? Adobe probably runs a verification service. Hans ----------------------------------------------------------------- Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands tel: 038 477 53 69 | voip: 087 875 68 74 | www.pragma-ade.com | www.pragma-pod.nl -----------------------------------------------------------------
On Mon, 2012-03-19 at 10:27 +0100, Andreas Schneider wrote:
Under this part was a signature field I could click which made Adobe Reader prompt for a digital certificate.
Great idea. It would be great if one could use any OpenPGP key. -- Kip Warner -- Software Engineer OpenPGP encrypted/signed mail preferred http://www.thevertigo.com
participants (7)
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Andreas Schneider -
Hans Hagen -
Kip Warner -
luigi scarso -
Martin Schröder -
Michael Hallgren -
Mojca Miklavec