[DVIPDFMx] Allowing comments in PDF created ?

William Adams will.adams at frycomm.com
Tue Jul 28 20:23:08 KST 2009


On Jul 22, 2009, at 4:02 AM, Jerome Duriez wrote:

> Hello, thank you for your answer. That's me that doesn't answer very  
> well, but in fact I'm now quite confused about this problem :
>
>   The comments I'm speaking about are comments you can add in .pdf  
> files with Adobe Standard. Such examples are in attached file. I was  
> told by two different people that it was impossible to add these  
> comments in the .pdf files I generated. A third one confirmed me  
> that it was the default case when you work with Latex "on Linux" (I  
> can not be more precise for the moment, sorry...).
>
>   What makes me confused is that :
> - I was told that this is linked with security settings you can find  
> in somewhere like (in Adobe softwares) : Document -> Protection or  
> Security settings -> Comments : allowed or not. But I discovered  
> that for the same .pdf, open once with Adobe Reader, or once with  
> Adobe Standard, the comments are one time "allowed" and one time  
> not...
> - In all cases : I do not have Adobe Standard on my PC but on an  
> other one I tried myself for the first time if I can add comments in  
> my .pdf. It was completely possible, for the one generated with  
> dvipdfmx especially...
>
> So in fact I do not know if I have always to face this problem : I  
> asked my supervisor if it is the case for him (he's the first to be  
> concerned) but at the moment I do not have the answer.
>   I'm very sorry not to be able to be more precise, but maybe you've  
> already heard of something like this...


There are several different levels at work here:

  - one can make comments in a .pdf as it is being made using pdftex  
(and I believe dvipdfmx) --- just a matter of putting a couple of  
specials in
  - a person w/ Acrobat Standard or Professional can use the internal  
commenting tools to add comments / annotations irregardless of the  
source of the .pdf
  - a person w/ Acrobat Professional can encrypt a .pdf and ``enable  
(it) for commenting'' using Adobe Reader (the idea here is to allow a  
person who doesn't own Acrobat to make comments)
  - further complicating this is the matter of third-party tools which  
can make changes to .pdfs which may or may not be done as comments /  
annotations.
  - similarly, pdftex's ability to place a .pdf allows one to take an  
extant .pdf, pull it in and place comments over it --- awkward, but  
workable if one can work out where one wants them to go x,y coordinate- 
wise

William

-- 
William Adams
senior graphic designer
Fry Communications
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.



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