Dear Monks, don't know if I should continue here or ask a separate SOPW question, especially if it's not strictly about Perl. Should I completely drop support for (very obsolete and perhaps buggy) implementation of PDF Encryption in CAM::PDF, or continue to drag it along into my sub-class? Will anyone miss it, or should I restrict i.e. isolate this "encryption" from my new features, emitting warnings now and then "don't use it here, don't do that, etc."?

CAM::PDF claims to support 40-bit RC4 encryption to read-write, and 128-bit non-AES to read only. Nothing more modern. In my tests, it does open encrypted files of both kinds but only if owner and user passwords were the same; and for the 40-bit variant, it can also open a file with different O/U pair of passwords, but succeeds only if U/U pair of strings is provided to constructor. Weird.

When CAM::PDF is used to encrypt non-encrypted PDF files, for P/P (i.e. same O/U) passwords, the produced file is opened OK by Adobe Reader (or modern browsers) after requesting a password. For O/U (different pair), Reader accepts either "U" or "O" password but displays a blank page. Actually, the Reader always accepts either of the two, if another authoring app was used to encrypt (and displays a file correctly), so the comment in line 2951 is moot. "Perhaps a bug", indeed.

I can successfully run CAM::PDF's test suite, with "CAM::PDF" replaced with "PDF::CAMPDF::X" in test files. Some of the tests are about setting PDF permissions/passwords, then saving and re-reading scalars. But I'm unhappy because of compromises I had to make to keep functional what I consider obsolete and buggy, and not interested in. Also, my idea was to inherit the test suite (at least, for now); if "encryption/permissions" part is stricken out, it gets somewhat slim.

Personally, PDF encryption is source of confusion/irritation at best and misery at worst; and absolute taboo in my working life (pre-press). But I don't know, perhaps it's better not to be too hasty (throwing "encryption" away)? Is PDF encryption, modern or not, actually widely used in, eh-m, the "first world"? Considering the effort obviously put into development by CAM? Or is it a niche thing no one will miss?

In reply to Re: Choosing namespace/name for (my first) CPAN module which is a sub-class of a well-known distribution by Anonymous Monk
in thread Choosing namespace/name for (my first) CPAN module which is a sub-class of a well-known distribution by Anonymous Monk

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