iText: digital signatures

[Gian Franco]

Hello Bruno,

Could you please elaborate on the digital signatures in pdf.

In your experience what is the acceptance of pdf's digital
signatures in governmental and/or private companies.

Does pdf, and consequently iText, cover a good part of what
is generally asked from digital signatures or is its acceptance
a business and not a technical issue.

Cheers,

Gian

[Bruno Lowagie]

Gian Franco wrote:Could you please elaborate on the digital signatures in pdf.

Well... I can't copy chapter 12 in this forum...

Gian Franco wrote:In your experience what is the acceptance of pdf's digital
signatures in governmental and/or private companies.

Governments are making laws that make digital signatures almost
equivalent to handwritten signatures all over the world. The acceptance
of digital signatures by companies is growing every day.

Gian Franco wrote:Does pdf, and consequently iText, cover a good part of what
is generally asked from digital signatures or is its acceptance
a business and not a technical issue.

Yes. Adobe (and iText) have always been cooperating with governments
to create and follow standards. For instance: the most recent standard
was a European initiative: PAdES (by ETSI). This standard is now implemented
in Acrobat X and will be available in one of the next iText releases.
(As a matter of fact, some developers are already creating LTV signatures
using iText, but you need to be an expert to know how to achieve this.)

[Gian Franco]

Bruno Lowagie wrote:Well... I can't copy chapter 12 in this forum...

...no, please don't, I'll get banned for asking it

Thank you for the very interesting reply.

Cheers,

Gian