Robin
At the risk of being controversial, I’d like to offer a contrary view.
First, there are several real and valid reasons for wanting to work with the
content of PDF documents outside of Acrobat Reader (or whatever PDF viewer
you choose). For one thing, some correspondents send PDF files even when
they are drafts for review (yes, I know Acrobat allows commenting on PDF
files, but it does not support content changes). For another, I often want
to copy a slug of text from a PDF document only to find that it is difficult
to use (because of the unpredictable way Acrobat deals with line endings and
columnisation) or unusable (because of DRM). And as recently as today, I
had a valid reason for extracting a short part of a long PDF file to send it
to a client. In these cases, and others, conversion can be extremely
helpful.
Second, any assumption that a PDF file is 'frozen' in the way that you would
like a record to be frozen is simply a mistaken assumption. PDF is a
"Portable Document Format", not a "Frozen Record Format". Users have been
able to use various tools to change and/or convert PDF files for ages.
Third, by openly placing this conversion utility at users' fingertips, you
are making my second point explicit to users. This is crucial, I suggest.
No longer will users be lulled into thinking PDF is frozen and immutable.
This is A Good Thing.
The moral, I suppose, is that if immutability of records matters, then you
need to find another mechanism, such as read-only directories (for storage)
or digital signatures (for transmission). As a slightly left-field
solution, you could always consider using the weird character encoding that
the author of the MoReq2010 draft used for the PDF version of that document;
the result was a document that looks perfect on-screen or when printed, but
that cannot be converted to any other format without prohibitive effort.
Sorry....
Marc Fresko
From: The UK Records Management mailing list
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Robin Scally
Sent: 15 February 2011 12:07
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: PDF conversion
Dear List
I would like your opinion on a recent development in my workplace. For
reasons unbeknown they have implemented software (Nuance PDF Converter) that
allows any employee to convert a .pdf file in to, well pretty much any
Microsoft product, excel, word, etc. I accept that these conversion tools
are freely available, yet should they be used in organisations, and
especially without briefing employees on the risk associated with such
conversion tools.
Apart from the obvious changes in content, context and structure and the
lack of reliability, trustworthiness and integrity, it would also remove the
last barrier to securing a document from further changes, as no other format
is used. Today I converted an invoice changed the sums and saved back to
.pdf.
I really cannot see the business benefit. Does anyone else use such
conversion tools? Do the cons far out way the pros? What are the possible
implications on information security, rights and governance?
I 'think' I pretty much know the answers, or maybe not, and therefore would
welcome the views of the list.
Kind regards
Robin
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