01.15.2005 01:14

xpdf defeats 'no copy & paste' on latest version of Thornburgh-Boccardi Report


There's been much discussion on blogs after CBS Report file has been modifed[sic]! Cut and Paste now prohibited!, by Seth Finkelstein, which notes tht some pdf attributes are set to 'no' on the latest version of the Thornburgh-Boccardi report. The old version of the report is unavailable on CBS's server(s).

I had downloaded a copy of the report the day it went up on CBS's servers, and it lives in my ~/Documents directory.

I just downloaded the latest version of the report from here.

Opening the new file with xpdf, I can copy and paste text (more accurately, swipe and paste).

No need to fiddle with attribute, so-called 'security' settings (sneering quote marks intentional) with Adobe Acrobat. As expected, when you open the new file version with the Linux version of Acrobat (I'm at version 5.0 here), copy (swipe) and paste doesn't work.