one thing I love of Manifold is the ability to export my maps in PDF format, using layers and opacity. I would like to have an option to put some sort of security to the file exported/created. At least a simple password, so we can deliver to our customers and non-gis users a "Secured PDF". I tried to do it, in a 3rd party software, but I loose the great things Manifold does, like the layer handling capability.

Any comments, do you think is worth to send a Suggestion to the Manifold development team???

I am no programmer, but that suggestion is it Hard to Implement? or if enough support is shown here, we might see it soon, in a near future release??

Any comments, welcome.

Have a great day everyone. Kind regards, Tomas

One comment I would offer is that the security of PDFs is a joke. Actually they are reasonably secure against casual hacking if they only open with a strong password, but the most common kind of "security" that is supposed to protect against copying or modifying the file once opened is easily broken.There are commercial and even freeware packages to do this, and it's no big deal to write a script for the purpose if you care to.

This is part of a larger general truth -- if it can be displayed on a screen, the protection can be evaded.

If what you really want is simply to prevent unauthorized users from opening it, why not simply deliver it using SecureZIP?

Will O'Neil • analysis.williamdoneil.com/

It's always good to learn that security is not what it appears to be.

To give the appearance of security, CutePDF Pro does allow for adding password security to the PDF without losing the layers, etc.

One caveat is that if you combine several PDFs with layers into one multi-page PDF you may lose the layers.

Thanks Sunsong, CutePDF Pro does the work we need it. Thanks for the advice. Tomas