Comments to be locked by default

[RomanAp]

Hello again!

I was wondering if it was possible to setup the "locked" property to Yes by default instead of a NO for any of the comment objects.
Right now every time a highlight or a shape is added to the document one would have to manually lock it.
However, in our workflow I can see a dozen edits like that being added to a document within a short period of time by our team members and having them manually lock these edits would really slow the team down. Most likely to the point where they just wont do it, which of course leads to the danger of the comments being deleted.

Rectangle property

Thank you!
Roman

[TrackerSupp-Daniel]

Hi, RomanAp

Currently this is not possible as locking the comment would prevent any manipulations, including typing text after placing a typewriter comment. I will forward the request and see if it is something that could be made possible, but I cannot make any promises at this time.

Edit: The Dev team have come back and informed me that it may be possible, but would be highly complex, as such, unless we see significant demand for this, it will likely not be implemented in the forseeable future. We will keep note that there is interest in this function.

With that said, you can make use of the Comments pane (Ctrl_M) to select all comments (Ctrl_A) and lock them at the same time, so that users only need to remember to lock all comments before saving the document.

Kind regards,

[RomanAp]

Hi Daniel,

Thank you for the quick reply!
I am glad that this functionality is at least possible. I will get back to our team and see if they'd be ok with just locking all comments at the end of an edit.
On a slightly different (but still related) subject, is there any scripting available for PDF-Exchange editor say in Python, Lua or Perl. This way I could script this feature myself by locking all comments periodically or before document is closed or before placing next comment in the document.

Thanks again!
Roman

[TrackerSupp-Daniel]

Hi, RomanAp

We do offer SDK products, which would likely be able to accomplish that, however that would likely be more than you want to consider for a single function. Unfortunately I do not believe it is possible to so this any other way.

Kind regards,

[RomanAp]

Hi Daniel,

So looks like I was able to find my answer. While researching scripting options I came across JavaScript support in PDF-XChange editor. After looking a bit more I was able to put together a script that looks at all the annotations present in the document via the getAnnots() function and then modifies the "lock" property of each annotation.
I call this script after save and before close of the document, which gets me to 95% of my goal of preventing accidental annotation deletes.

Thanks again for your help!
Roman

[TrackerSupp-Daniel]

Hi, RomanAp

Glad to see you found a solution, I wouldn't have recommended that method as it would need to be applied manually to each document. Also, you will probably want to apply the locking "Before" saving not "after". Else it wont be saved like that and you will still have unlocked comments when you open the file next.

Kind regards,

[RomanAp]

Hi Daniel,

Thanks for the feedback!
I didn't realize that the scripts are tied to a particular document until you pointed that out. Its a bit of work in advance but I think it will have to do for now. Do you know if scripts can be tied to the application itself and not a particular document? (I am sorry if the discussion is going slightly of the original topic)
And you are right, I swapped the script action to be before the save not after.

Thanks!
Roman

[Ovg]

2RomanAp
You can add you js to Add-on Tools and apply it to all open files

viewtopic.php?f=62&t=28855&p=113069#p113069

[TrackerSupp-Daniel]