[reportlab-users] Allow commenting on a pdf

[Gabe Black]

On Sat, Dec 5, 2009 at 2:42 AM, Andy Robinson <andy at reportlab.com> wrote:

> I cannot find a 'Commenting' property in the PDF spec, but since we

> added our original options, they have invented a whole maze of obscure

> corners of the spec for controlling 'usage rights', and added some

> more bits to the bitmask controlling permissions.


I should have been more clear.  I was referring to what is displayed
if you open a pdf in Acrobat Reader and select File -> Properties...
and select the "Security" tab and view the "Document Restrictions
Summary".  Within that summary there is a "Commenting" property that
is always "Not Allowed."


> How exactly are you creating a PDF out of Adobe's tools so that

> Commenting is set?  I'd like to reproduce this in the office (we have

> Acrobat Pro) and look in the resulting PDF file to see what's

> different, but I cannot do this until Monday.


I do not have Acrobat Pro or any of their commercial versions so I am
not able to create a document with Commenting set.  However, their
feature matrix http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/matrix.html
indicates that Standard, Pro, and Pro Extended all have the capability
to create the document with the "Commenting" property, and the free
Reader is able to highlight, comment, etc the document if the pdf was
created with the Commenting Property.

I suspect if you were to use Pro and create a pdf with Commenting set,
in Adobe Reader you could open up the File->Properties->Security and
you would see the "Commenting" property set.

I suspect that since this feature appears to require purchasing Adobe
products, Adobe will probably not expose this in the pdf spec nor make
enabling this feature simple.

Since I last posted, I did some googling to see if there were other
products that were able to create documents with the "commenting"
feature, but have been unable to find any.
- Gabe