Rogue PDF solutions

ConnorBehan · 2007-09-04 23:42:20

As I'm sure many of you are aware acroread strictly enforces DRM on PDF files. Xpdf includes this as well so I'm pretty sure that means Kpdf won't copy protected PDFs as it is based on Xpdf. Furthermore, poppler is a fork of Xpdf so ePDFview and evince which are based on poppler will probably employ this as well. Here's what I did to bypass PDF DRM even though it may be illegal if it is used in this manner.

* Grabbed GSView RPM from http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/gsview/

* Installed RPM from the AUR

* Installed GSview

rpm -i --nodeps /path/to/gsview.rpm

* Uninstalled ghostscript as it does not contain libgs.so

pacman -Rd ghostscript

* Grabbed a ghostscript RPM which does contain it from http://rpm2html.osmirror.nl/fedora/core … .i386.html

* Installed that

rpm -i --nodeps /path/to/ghostscript.rpm

* Installed pstotext from the AUR

*Installed pstoedit

pacman -S pstoedit

As far as I know, that will enable all useful features of GSView and ghostscript which are DRM-less. Another option would be a patch to Xpdf but all the one's I've seen are so outdated that they only work with version <1.0. If anyone else has anything to share on this - much appreciated as it helps freedom of information.

EDIT: http://fr.rpmfind.net/linux/rpm2html/se … libgs.so.7 is where I got ghostscript, the 8.15 one up there doesn't work for some unknown reason.

Last edited by ConnorBehan (2007-09-05 04:22:48)

skottish · 2007-09-05 00:26:27

KPDF has an option called:

Obey DRM limitations

Never tried in on a DRM encrypted PDF though. I don't know if that's what it means.

Anyway, Imagemagick should be able to do similar types of stuff.

.....

I can't remember how it's done, and I can't find any PDF's that KPDF can't save. Do you know of any examples that I can see?

Last edited by skottish (2007-09-05 01:04:18)

ConnorBehan · 2007-09-05 04:14:11

http://download.microsoft.com/download/ … System.pdf is a fine example of a BRUTAL pdf that only M$ thinks is ethical to make. I installed acroread just to verify that it was protected, then uninstalled acroread. GSView can extract text perfectly (well as perfectly as a somewhat buggy program can ) so I hope you have success using Kpdf for that as well .

gradgrind · 2007-09-05 07:44:30

I just tried kpdf. If you uncheck the 'Obey DRM limitations' option you can extract text from that document.

onearm · 2007-09-05 07:57:44

I just tried that M$ pdf with evince and I can extract whatever part of it I want...

ConnorBehan · 2007-09-05 16:33:57

Interesting, I guess acroread and the original XPDF are the only programs that force DRM limitations. KDE and Gnome have taken steps to get rid of that - that's good to know. I wonder if the same goes for ePDFView.

ConnorBehan · 2007-09-09 01:43:48

I am aware of the situation now. The Xpdf GUI is a viewer for Xpdf with no extract capabilities for ANY file, just like how ePDFViewer is a viewer for Poppler with no extract capabilities. Xpdf extracts with command line tools that enforce DRM, but Poppler has DRM-less versions of those same command line tools so Xpdf has been completely replaced, in a sense. Kpdf can ignore DRM and so can evince. Natrually ghostscript viewers have no DRM either.

The ghostscript in RPM form that I used above was not needed, new versions of ghostscript can be compiled as a shared object and in fact the GPL ghostscript in the AUR works just fine. GSView works with libgs.so for ghostscript versions up to 9.99 (or as it sees it 999). The one I tried didn't work because it was 8.15.2 which it saw as 8152 so it was higher than 999.

Anyway, I created my first PKGBUILD. It is GSView and it installs well for me except man and doc dirs aren't created in /usr/share maybe because makepkg likes to keep it light. It requires GPL ghostscript and GTK 1.2 (which you can have at the same time as GTK 2.0). I strongly recommend people who like that program check it out / vote for it / verify it as safe / whatever.

Arch Linux

#1 2007-09-04 23:42:20

Rogue PDF solutions

#2 2007-09-05 00:26:27

Re: Rogue PDF solutions

#3 2007-09-05 04:14:11

Re: Rogue PDF solutions

#4 2007-09-05 07:44:30

Re: Rogue PDF solutions

#5 2007-09-05 07:57:44

Re: Rogue PDF solutions

#6 2007-09-05 16:33:57

Re: Rogue PDF solutions

#7 2007-09-09 01:43:48

Re: Rogue PDF solutions

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