ANN: Python Decrypt PDF script -- builds on pdftools

[David Boddie]

follower at gmail.com (Follower) wrote in message news:<3c18c08f.0408201732.6766d375 at posting.google.com>...

> I found some examples here (protected/encrypted with no user
> password):
> 
>  * <http://www.idealsoftware.com/ev_pdf_samples.htm>
>  * <http://www.paisano.com/pdf/pdftest.htm>

Thanks. I'll take a look at those sites.

> It also looks like the following GPL'd tool enables you to encrypt
> without Adobe tools:
> 
>  * <http://www.accesspdf.com/pdftk/>

It could be interesting to see exactly what needs to be done to encrypt
PDF files, but pdftools doesn't support file output at the moment.

> The code works well enough for me at the moment that my motivation for
> taking it further is a little low at the moment, sorry. :-) I'm not
> sure how straight-forward it would be to add it transparently, as at a
> minimum I think it needs to handle strings and streams differently. I
> will keep your request in mind though...

No problem. I've no great desire to improve it, either. I'm hoping that
someone will want to take it over and maintain it.

> Incidentally, have you considered making the Numeric import in
> pdftools optional? I just commented it out and things worked fine for
> me as I wasn't actually accessing page content.

I was trying to extend the module towards support for exporting the
contents in suitable file formats, and Numeric was used just for
matrix handling. A streamlined pdftools would just provide a simpler
wrapper around the objects in the PDF file.

> Thanks for your work with pdftools.

Thanks for taking it further!

David