Hi. I would like to know if there are any downloadable/online tools
(preferably free) that would convert an image file into a one-page PDF
that cannot be saved by the user?

(please note that this is all the functionality I'm looking for in this tool)

Thank you!

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Clarification of Question by amirehsans-ga on 12 Aug 2004 23:40 PDT

Wow! So I think PDF is not the solution I'm looking for. To be honest,
the purpose here is to protect hightly valuable content which we want
to make every penny out of; i.e., we do not want it to be publicly
available unless people have paid for it. So we want to minimize the
chances that others save our material (as image, or others) easily and
sell it/make it available to the public. (I know they can always
'capture' the screen, but very few people would do that, and it's good
enough to minimize the chances of that happening)

Would you know of any other popular medium (other than PDF) that would
help me distribute my content?

Thank you...

Hey there,

You can create a PDF file online at Adobe's website:

Adobe's website: http://www.adobe.com
Specific link for creating PDF files: http://createpdf.adobe.com/?v=AHP

However, it is not possible to restrict the file from being saved
since it has to first be saved to the user's computer in order to be
viewed. And once there, the OS is responsible for controlling access.

Hope that helps!  

Josh Fraser

amirehsans,

I'm not sure that PDF is really the way to go on this... I don't know
of any functionality that will stop a user from copying the file off
of your server, unless you do some REAL voodoo on the server-side of
it, and even then, I would think that any file that can be displayed
in Acrobat, can be saved by a perseverent enough user of Acrobat.

What may help you is to work out some sort of transparent ActiveX
control... Flash or Shockwave-style animations can be made to look
seamless with the rest of the site, and you have exact control over
user privileges (i.e., copy-paste, save, etc), such that you can
display data that looks like standard HTML (or fancier, if that's your
intention), yet doesn't behave like it.  Short of screen-capturing
everything that scrolls across the page, it would be very difficult
for the data to be removed from that kind of control.

Thanks my friend for pointing me in the right direction.