"flattening" ouput pdf

[Richmond]

On 26/04/14 20:01, Dr. Hawkins wrote:
> I am using "print cardName into  . . . "  to generate pdf output.
>
> This leaves me many (but not all) editable fields and clickable checkboxes.
>
> As this is for filing with court, and these "survive" the court impact,
> this is bad.  Very bad.
>
> Is there a way to "flatten" the pdf output so that it isn't editable?
>

As far as I know there are 2 types of PDF:

Those with an embedded text layer,

and those without one.

As I had a "lot of fun" a while back rescuing some work done on a 
Macintosh under Mac OS 8.1
with Clarisworks I tried to export the text (opened in my G3 iMac 
running 9.2) it as a PDF with
an embedded text layer and got a "flat" pdf; later on I managed to 
import the file into Mac OS 10.4
running Appleworks 6 (the son of Clarisworks), have a lot of fun with 
bitmapped fonts, and
get a pdf with an embedded text layer.

Your problem seems to be the reverse: you don't want an embedded text layer.

Reading in the Documentation I came cross this:

"The implementation of pdf printing resides in a dynamic library called 
revpdfprinter."

The question at this point is whether the presence of an embedded text 
layer is determined by
'revpdfprinter' or the operating system LC is operating on.

'revpdfprinter' is nowhere to be seen in the Application Browser.

It might not be a bad idea to have a look here:

https://github.com/runrev/livecode/tree/master/revpdfprinter

The only snag about this is that it does not contain a livecode stack, 
just raw code.

There is also a 'revpdfprinter.so' file inside the Livecode folder;

But I have not had much joy opening it.

Richmond.