I use a Macintosh and from time to time I am forced to use the unfriendly
PDF format which is fairly useless for reading on the screen as it is
designed to produce a printed copy. I interpolate in the text of the
posting what I would expect to be able to do with this technology.
At 8:30 AM 10/6/97, George Pitcher wrote:
>Following the recent messages about the security issues surrounding electronic
>delivery, I would like to mention the work done by the SCOPE Project.
>
>We have developed a system which offers the following features:
>
>Read only documents
> These cannot be copied, 'captured' or saved/exported in a usable form.
>
The key commbination Command/shift/3 will copy what is on the screen into a
graphics file in PICT format.
Numerous utilities exist to cappture part of the screen into a graphics file.
All OCR programs will work with graphics files.
It would be laborious but I would expect to be able to extract what I
wanted to and email it where I wished.
>Authorised printing
> Pre-registered users may print only one copy.
> All printed copies will be watermarked with the user's name.
There are a variety of utilities that act like printers but send the output
to a file. The _standard_ Mac laser printer driver will capture printer
output as postscript. Such a file can be viewed by ghostscript on any kind
of machine.
>
>The system uses PDF technology with extra plug-ins at both the creation and
>reading/printing stages. The system is currently being tested but to date
>there
>have been no breaches of security.
>
If it ends up imposing too many restrictions on the use of the document it
is self defeating. In the academic world the aim of the game is
recognition to the author. Imposing impediments to copying and
dissemination defeats this.
No doubt there will be niche commercial markets where this might be useful
but not in universities.
Tony
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Australian National University, ACT 0200 AUSTRALIA
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