[pdftex] expiring Acrobat documents (+ flame wars)

Hans Hagen pragma at wxs.nl
Wed Jul 9 10:29:28 CEST 2003


At 04:50 09/07/2003 -0400, Welch, Ivo wrote:

>Hi:  I would like pdflatex to create .pdf documents that expire, i.e.,
>are no longer easy to view/handle for the average user.  My document is
>changing rapidly, and I do not want anyone to see the 6-month old
>version, but to download instead the later version.  Naturally, I am not
>an expert, and I was hoping someone has already produced something
>similar.  My guess is that some javascript could, after a particular
>date, put up a box on every action that says "please download the
>revised document from ... instead", and/or scramble the input itself.  I
>know it will not stop determined hackers, but this is not necessary.
>  Has anyone implemented such an item?  If not, can you recommend a good
>primer?

as far as i know here is no built in feature for that, so javascripting is 
probably the way to go:

- in the pdf javascript manuel you can find into about the date object, so 
that way you can make a popup, or even something (pseudo code):

   if currentdata < somedate
     showallert('expired')
     waitforafewseconds
     executemenuitem(closedocument)
   fi

- you can then make that a action to be performed each time the document is 
opened (document action)

Hans
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