Thanks Andreas for your work.

I'm very new to this digital signing area.  I know that a certificate is required and I've updated my client regarding that.  So far my clients haven't used that certificate themselves, but theirr auditors are using on their behalf to file papers.   Hope I'll be get those certificate details soon.   

Searching this forum, gave me couple of links (https://community.appeon.com/index.php/qna/q-a/sign-a-xml-file-with-a-certificate-a1-a3#reply-24664) which talks about signing an xml file.   

And with the introduction of so many features in PDF file creation and security area, I thought there might be an idea to add this (digital signature) feature too in future releases.   Just want to confirm that, before digging further.

To manually sign a documents, there seems to be a lot of options.  Even adobe reader got an option (don't know how that works, though)

What my customer need is, to incorporate that facility in our software so that there won't be any manual work (and manual errors) in preparing and submitting those documents.

Happiness Always
BKR Sivaprakash

Another solution that I like is using PDFCreator. It provides a COM interface.

COM Interface — PDFCreator user guide (pdfforge.org)

…change the PDF signature settings — PDFCreator user guide (pdfforge.org)

…change the PDF security settings — PDFCreator user guide (pdfforge.org)

But what is nice is that you can setup a printer that will directly sign your documents during printing.

Follows the configuration screen:

This solution is independent. That means that you don't have to change something in your application...

Andreas.

Hi.

Don't know what is your experience about document signing. If you search internet you may find lot of solutions. Example:

c# - Adding a Digital signature to a PDF with iTextSharp - Stack Overflow

But, most examples will be in java or c# (you may find also vb code). Also most examples will be java or .net related solutions. Some of them may offer free editions.

To sign a pdf you need a certificate. So if you are investigating this for a solution that is used by other companies, this step should be achieved by them. You then should provide a way to use their certificate and sign the document. Certificate will have a password that normally your client should not want to share with you (same for certificate file?). There are also other things to think about but those are easier.

As I said you may find free solutions to sign pdf's. iText for example has a community version with agpl license. I've never used it. But I believe that you could easily create a c# solution for signing which can be called from pb using .NET DLL Importer (and of course you may make it com visible to avoid using .NET DLL Importer). But if you need support at any time you will have to rely to the community. You may find that using a commercial sdk may give you some benefits. But this is a choice you have to make.

(If I have some free time during weekend, I may do some tests and post the results).

For PowerBuilder adding support to sign Documents, why don't you request it as an enhancement request?

Andreas.