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Subject:RE: Making Word documents dead-only? From:Tom Johnson <johnsont -at- starcutter -dot- com> To:"'Smith, Martin'" <martin -dot- smith -at- encorp -dot- com>, TECHWR-L <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Mon, 24 Jul 2000 11:30:24 -0400
On Friday, July 21, 2000 12:14 PM, Smith, Martin
[SMTP:martin -dot- smith -at- encorp -dot- com] 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.
>
> Martin
>
>
And I reply:
I'll print it, and scan it using OCR. If I wanted to, I could probably
figure out a way to run OCR right on the Acrobat files. In my opinion, as
far as documents go, if someone can look at it, they can reproduce it.
About the best you can do is make it as hard as possible to edit.
A year or two ago we had a discussion about this very topic. If I recall
correctly, there was an interesting discussion about possible ways to
prevent editing with some speculation about what could happen in the future
(things like how to make text readable while making illegible to OCR).
Maybe I was dreaming, but you may be able to find something in the archives
by searching on OCR or read-only.
Tom Johnson
Technical Writer
Elk Rapids Engineering Div., Star Cutter Company
johnsont -at- starcutter -dot- com - work
thomasj -at- freeway -dot- net - personal
