PortableSigner

PortableSigner works with IcedTea 3.8 (icedtea-bin-8). This is a small and efficient program to sign pdfs. Apart from saving the certificate in a pkcs12 format file, as suggested by michaelash, no further configuration is needed when used in Gentoo Linux. Excellent utility.

Nice lightweight tool. Requires quaqua (libquaqua64.dylib) for proper look and usability on Mac OS. Works only on PKCS12 certificates Uses fixed hash algorithm (SHA1?) Pros: * supports including a picture (logo) * supports appending a page for signature information so that the original document remains readable * supports different languages for signature Cons: * printed information spacious and not scalable * no TLS (trusted time server) support (biggest problem to me)

PortableSigner fills an important role for do-it-yourself security certificate signing of pdf files. My basic workflow is to produce a pdf file with LaTeX (pdfLaTeX) and then to sign the pdf file with PortableSigner. I had some trouble getting a Signature File in pkcs12 (p12) format. I used CAcert.org ("Free Digital Certificates for Everyone") and was able to save a personal certificate to my Firefox browser. (I couldn't figure out how to do this in Chrome). I was then able to export my certificate from Firefox as a pkcs12 format file (with a .p12 extention) from Firefox: Edit -> Preferences -> Advanced -> Certificates -> View Certificates -> Your Certificates -> Backup. This file, which I saved as my.p12 serves as the Signature File input for PortableSigner. (I was not able to convert my.crt to P12 format using openssl but this is supposed to be a straightforward alternative. Tips appreciated.) I also downloaded the Root Certificate (root.crt) from CAcert.org. Because Acrobat doesn't automatically recognize digital signatures from CAcert.org, I had to go to Document -> Manage Trusted Identities -> Add Contact and then select the Root Certificate root.crt. I would be grateful for more documentation. Thank you very much PortableSigner.

Very necessary thing

It does exactly what it says it does, and we have it in our testing environment about to go into production. Thanks for the great software!