[venkateshbr]

hi norman,
had a look at the digital signature stuff in CVS. most of the basic features are covered. one thing i noticed is getting a keystore from external context.getResourceAsStream. This is good enough for certificates lying in the keystore and keystore itself present under externalcontext path.

The improvements around this could be to accept the private key as input. The private key can be obtained from browser keystore using an applet and passed to UISignature. So that the document would be signed by a real certificate lying on the browser.

i am not sure about the feasibility of this.. just a thought for improvement

i can think of one possible use case. A user input page for the user to enter some text which will be converted to pdf and will be signed by his certificate lying in the browser keystore.

thanks.

[norman.richards]

You want the CLIENT to sign the PDF? That doesn't really make sense to me - you'll have to explain a bit more. Why wouldn't the user just download the PDF and sign it with his tools? (we could support leaving a blank signature field for that) If the users signature is to have any validity, the user should not be sending his private key across to the server to remotely sign something. I definitely need some convincing here.

On the keystore location, the normal practice in JBoss for any key usage is to have the keystore in the conf directory. It seems to have worked well for all uses of keys in JBoss so far. I need to move the keystore configuration out of view file and into a separate component, but other than that I'm very comfortable with the keystore choices. (well, I would also like to give the option of using a JBoss security domain to completely externalize the configuration)

[venkateshbr]

i agree. one option is to download the pdf and sign it using some tools.
The other option is to sign the pdf using an applet reading the client keystore.
The reason i say client is in an e-biz transaction b/w a buyer and a supplier the document is always signed using the key of the buyer and sent to supplier.
I guess the blank signature field should suffice so that the user can download and sign the file.
thanks again for the signature support. i guess we can find more usecases for this as we start implementing .

[owen_yao]

Does current version support I18n? it seem the character except english can't be displayed.

[norman.richards]

It appears there are some problems. I'm not sure if it is out fault or iText's fault yet.

[spambob]

Hi Norman,

I just wanted to ask if there's any progress on the control where & how the text is placed ?

I.e. 5 inch from above, 3 inch from the left in 12 point verdana with a max with of 6 inch - like I requested on the previous side (you probably get the idea).

[elponderador]

I agree with the templates idea, a case where you have forms provided to you or you create one and then need to fill it in, to save the user time.

I am not sure about overlays, but I have built a component set based off of the ITextComponent class that uses the PdfContentByte more extensivly. I have color, shape, line, style, text, column and image components all based off the ItextComponent but using direct content for everything, which comes in handy when you want more control over where and how things are displayed. I would like to commit the stuff I have and contribute it, but I have not yet gotten a response on my contributors agreement. Anyways I vote for such functionality if it has not been already started in the back ground and will be glad to contribute what I have once I can if norman.richards thinks its a good idea.

[norman.richards]

Please open a JIRA issue for the changes. I have no problem including this type of functionality.

Thanks!

[elponderador]

Excuse my ignorance, but I don't appear to be able to add JIRA issues or simply do not know how. Maybe it relies on my contributors agreement being approved.

[pmuir]

You need to be logged in to JIRA using your jboss.com username, and then click create issue.

[elponderador]

Hey, not sure really who to ask, but I guess I won't be able to much contributing till my agreement is approved, any idea how long that takes?

I put one in about 2 months ago, and another request like 2 weeks ago, and still no response... anyways.

[norman.richards]

If you send me your information by email, I'll inquire with the labs guys. It should definitely NOT take anywhere near that long to get going.

[elponderador]

I got the approval email for my contributor agreement. I have also put in some jars, an example war and source code attached to the jira issue. Let me know if you need anything else to begin reviewing and/or incorporating any of it.

[pmuir]

Btw you don't need to sign a contributor agreement to submit patches. Only for those who have commit access.

[elponderador]

I appreciate that since I did mention a jira issue, but the jira issue is a actually a feature addition based off code I am contributing, does that also fall under the need for a contributors agreement?