Extended Rights Manifesto gets 10th Article
To give you an idea of the way I feel about Reader Extensions…
I was visiting a client this week. One of their graphic designers raises Ball Pythons, and (on request) brought one into the office during my visit. We got kind of cozy.
Anyhow… the POINT I’m trying to make is that the Extended Rights Manifesto has been updated with Article 10. To save you a click, here it is:
Article 10
Separate “form” rights from “save” rights. PDF forms are often used for document applications rather than as forms per se, as in CD-ROM interfaces, electronic brochures, and so on. These applications may require Extended Rights to import FDFs (for example), but do not require the ability to save a form. For these purposes, Acrobat Professional should be able to bestow form rights on a PDF without limitation or reservation. With these “pdf as application” rights applied, the default form-related warnings to the user when opening or closing the PDF would not occur.
In this way, it would become very easy to develop “application” PDFs using the full suite of forms functionality without interfering with a “real” forms oriented business-model for Extended Rights.
August 30th, 2006 at 4:23 pm
Duff,
I have mixed feelings about Article 10. In some situations that would be ok, but there are situations where both are needed. For example, say your PDF mini application contains a preferences panel where users can configure certain things to suit their needs. In order for these settings to be preserved across sessions, they need to be saved somewhere. If the PDF hooks up to a database or website, then the settings could be stored there, otherwise the form needs some sort of ability to save the settings externally, or save the data embedded within the form. One requires an export feature, the other a full or incremental Save of the PDF file.
It’s already possible to give certain forms rights with Acrobat by certifying the PDF file, however, do these rights extend to the Adobe Reader?
On the Acrobat scripting forum Thom Parker makes a couple of statements about this, but doesn’t clarify the issue regardign Reader.
“You certify a PDF by applying a digital signature to it with the “File->Save as Certified Document” menu item. The whole security thing is pretty complex. You’ll have to read about it in the Acrobat Manual. There are also serveral articals about this on the various PDF web sites. Once certified, anyone with the appropiate digital signature can execute a whole bunch of JavaScript on your document that would otherwise be blocked.”
“The validated certification does allow you to execute privileged JS (for the most part), but that same certification blocks adding attachments.”