Non-Printing PDFs with ConTeXt

Non-Printing PDFs with ConTeXt

[Malte Stien]

Hi all,

Is there a way I can get ConTeXt to produce PDFs that are not-printable? Just as a background to my question: This is not about copyright. Rather, I am using ConTeXt to produce quality process documents. The quality management system requires that all quality process documents be "controlled", that is one must prevent folks from printing copies of their own that then keep floating around the place and cannot be retracted when a new version of the quality process document is issued.

Hence, I am aiming for a paper-less scenario where everyone reads the documents on screen. Therefore, I would like to make printing impossible, or at least hard. The only one who should be able to print the document is the Document Manager; maybe the documents could be encrypted (PDF supports that, I believe), such that the Document Manager can print them knowing the password.

So far, I have only seen Word and Acrobat Distiller being able to do this. Is there a way I can setup ConTeXt to do this? Or are there some command line tools, that can do that after the PDF has been produced?

Any hints would be great.
Thank you,
Malte.

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Re: Non-Printing PDFs with ConTeXt

[Andreas Schneider]

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On Friday, May 4, 2012, at 12:37 Malte Stien wrote:
> Hi all,

> Is there a way I can get ConTeXt to produce PDFs that are
> not-printable? Just as a background to my question: This is not
> about copyright. Rather, I am using ConTeXt to produce quality
> process documents. The quality management system requires that all
> quality process documents be "controlled", that is one must prevent
> folks from printing copies of their own that then keep floating
> around the place and cannot be retracted when a new version of the
> quality process document is issued.

> Hence, I am aiming for a paper-less scenario where everyone reads
> the documents on screen. Therefore, I would like to make printing
> impossible, or at least hard. The only one who should be able to
> print the document is the Document Manager; maybe the documents
> could be encrypted (PDF supports that, I believe), such that the
> Document Manager can print them knowing the password.

> So far, I have only seen Word and Acrobat Distiller being able to
> do this. Is there a way I can setup ConTeXt to do this? Or are there
> some command line tools, that can do that after the PDF has been produced?

> Any hints would be great.
> Thank you,
> Malte.

You can accomplish PDF encryption with pdftk (for example):
http://www.pdflabs.com/tools/pdftk-the-pdf-toolkit/

You  use that to restrict certain features (in your case printing) and
protect  that restriction with a password. The PDF itself can still be
read without password.

Of  course  the  PDF viewer has to honor that restriction. If the user
finds  a PDF viewer that doesn't give a **** about these restrictions,
they  can  still  print it. But I think that doesn't really matter for
your scenario anyway. :-)

-- 
Best Regards,
Andreas

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Re: Non-Printing PDFs with ConTeXt

[luigi scarso]

On Fri, May 4, 2012 at 12:37 PM, Malte Stien <malte@stien.de> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Is there a way I can get ConTeXt to produce PDFs that are not-printable? Just as a background to my question: This is not about copyright. Rather, I am using ConTeXt to produce quality process documents. The quality management system requires that all quality process documents be "controlled", that is one must prevent folks from printing copies of their own that then keep floating around the place and cannot be retracted when a new version of the quality process document is issued.
>
> Hence, I am aiming for a paper-less scenario where everyone reads the documents on screen. Therefore, I would like to make printing impossible, or at least hard. The only one who should be able to print the document is the Document Manager; maybe the documents could be encrypted (PDF supports that, I believe), such that the Document Manager can print them knowing the password.
>
> So far, I have only seen Word and Acrobat Distiller being able to do this. Is there a way I can setup ConTeXt to do this? Or are there some command line tools, that can do that after the PDF has been produced?
>
> Any hints would be great.

see also
http://qpdf.sourceforge.net/

-- 
luigi
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Re: Non-Printing PDFs with ConTeXt

[Martin Schröder]

2012/5/4 Malte Stien <malte@stien.de>:
> Is there a way I can get ConTeXt to produce PDFs that are not-printable?

You want DRM. ConTeXt as such does not offer that; tools for DRM and PDF exist.

Best
   Martin
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Re: Non-Printing PDFs with ConTeXt

[Mojca Miklavec]

On Fri, May 4, 2012 at 1:35 PM, Martin Schröder wrote:
> 2012/5/4 Malte Stien wrote:
>> Is there a way I can get ConTeXt to produce PDFs that are not-printable?
>
> You want DRM. ConTeXt as such does not offer that; tools for DRM and PDF exist.

This looks like a FAQ to me. I don't know much about those tools and
which ones are the best, but I think that we need a clear wiki page
(or something like that) shortly describing existing tools (maybe both
free and commercial) for post-processing documents together with their
pros & cons.

Mojca
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