Stone Design Forums

Hi all,

I'm using command line version of PStill to combine multiple PDF files into a single layout.

When I specify password protected files as input, pstill fails with the following error:

.....
PDF Transcoding: Decoding using User Password
+ PDF Page Size for page 1: ......
PDF Transcoding - automatically setting PS Language Level to 2
+ PDF '....' is processed...
+ '......' is preparated for trancoding...
PDF Transcoding: Decoding using User Password
PDF Transcoding: Decoding using Owner Password
ERROR: PDF TRANSCODING FAILED
! PDF Input '...' could not be processed.
! Most likely this is an encrypted PDF file and its permissions
! does not allow 'printing' and 'copy of text and graphics'.
WARNING: Unable to read from job '/tmp/tempstdin.ps2'
* Visit http://www.stone.com/PStill for more info!
PStill MACOSX V1.72.8 of 12. February 2005


I've tried to specify the password through -M inputupass= and/or-M inputopass= , but it seems that:
- PStill is not enable to decrypt the encrypted document (generated in Adobe Acrobat Professional 7);

or

- PStill correctly decode it, but it still uses the specified permissions, that is print/copy not enabled.

Any suggestions ?

Thanks for your support,

Marco.

The MACOSX pstill CLI is just a frontend to the GUI - it takes whatever is set in the GUI's preferences.

Probably what you want to do is set up a hot folder, set up some passwords in PStill, go to preferences, save the Current Set... as a job options file into that folder, and run your files through there. You may need to change the Job description key as outlined somewhere on this page:http://www.stone.com/NewSincePB1.html

....
You can even set up a watched folder to automatically process these
types of job by adding these keys to the saved pPref file in the folder:
JobType = SeparatorJob;
HalftoneFrequency = 50;
/* valid options for the key "JobType": */
ConversionJob // standard
NormalizeJob // Normalize PS
NormalizeJobEPS // Normalize EPS
PosterizeJob // to make tiled poster
SeparatorJob // to create folders with separations from PStill processed PDF


If you truly want a geeky CLI - consider frank's LINUX version of pstill!

www.pstill.com

andrew

Marco:

There are utilities such as pdf-Recover that can very quickly make a copy of password-protected PDFs with the print/copy restrictions removed. (But if a user password has been set so that the file can't be opened at all without a password, such utilities won't work.)

But whenever I point this out, I also mention that there may be ethical and legal issues -- are you really making fair use? (Of course if you authored the PDFs there's no potential problem.)

Excuse me for the delay in my answer.....

I call PStill CLI from a program of mine, so I never use the GUI front end.

My software use CLI for doing some elaborations, using the sLang feature, that I like very much.

Sometimes I have to process some password protected PDF, with print/copy restriction. These PDF are generated by me (I sent them to my customers) and I know the password used to protect them.

Instead of editing PDF files and changing their security settings I would like to let PStill do the job for me

Is it possible ?

Thanks so much for you support,

Marco.

the PStill CLI uses the preferences - where the password keys are set.

Set the passwords in PStill's Conversion -> Security panel, then use the CLI.