[NTG-pdftex] [pdftex-Feature Requests][4328] Avoid the generation of /ID optionally

[pdftex-featurerequests at sarovar.org]

Feature Requests item #4328, was opened at 2011-03-10 13:24
Status: Open
Priority: 3
Submitted By: Jens Mueller (jens)
Assigned to: Nobody (None)
Summary: Avoid the generation of /ID optionally 
Category: PDF generation
Group: v1.40
Resolution: None


Initial Comment:
pdftex will always set /ID in the file trailer. But setting it is optional, if /Encrypt is not set (see section 7.5.5 in ISO 32000-1; can be obtained here
http://www.adobe.com/content/dam/Adobe/en/devnet/pdf/pdfs/PDF32000_2008.pdf)

Because /ID is always set it will change for each run because the current time is used for generating it. This can be annoying because it makes regeneration of the very same PDF (looking at the file contents) very difficult (see e.g. http://superuser.com/questions/130347/how-do-i-produce-bytewise-consistent-documents-with-pdflatex).

I suggest to add a flag to pdftex that allows to disable the generation of \ID. Something like
[-no]-id=<value>
to disable the generation of \ID or specifying the value on command line.

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