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Subject:Re: Making Word documents dead-only? From:Peter <pnewman1 -at- home -dot- com> To:"Smith, Martin" <martin -dot- smith -at- encorp -dot- com> Date:Sat, 22 Jul 2000 10:53:05 -0400
"Smith, Martin" wrote:
>
> I always have to find a way when someone says that something can't be done.
> If you want to distribute a document and ensure that it remains read only
> you could do the following:
> 1) Print the document to PostScript.
> 2) Open the PostScript code in GhostScript (a shareware PostScript
> interpreter)
> 3) Use GhostScript to produce a 72 dpi bitmap image of each page.
> 4) Use Acrobat to create a PDF file from the bitmapped pages.
>
> An extreme solution? Perhaps. It all depends on the seriousness of the need
> to distribute an electronic document that can't be hacked and edited.
Even then: just print and scan into a new document, change or annotate
at will; one can always scan and run it through an OCR. Typically, the
purpose for read only is to ensure that the original remains intact and
to prevent accidental changes. (I know, it's stating the obvious.) If
the document is large, then is the game worth the candle?
--
Peter
"When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a
minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute-and it's
longer than any hour. That's relativity," - Einstein-
