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jimmejardine / qiqqa-open-source

The open-sourced version of the award-winning Qiqqa research management tool for Windows
GNU General Public License v3.0
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Qiqqa not opening protected pdf's #403

Open ChristianLuciano opened 1 year ago

ChristianLuciano commented 1 year ago

I have set a password for the pdf's in qiqqa. It shows me that I have set a password with the associated pdf. But it doesn't open the pdf.

Is there a quick fix ?

By the way : Thank you very much for this excellent program :)

GerHobbelt commented 1 year ago

sorry, but Qiqqa does not / will not support password-protected PDFs.

In a future major release Qiqqa will attempt to "deprotect" any PDFs imported/loaded into its libraries -- something that can currently be done by external tools, such as the qpdf tool kit. Current Qiqqa uses all imported/loaded PDFs as-is, which can cause trouble, such as you're experiencing.

Rationale for the future direction:

Qiqqa is a (personal/team) library manager / 🦧librarian🦧 by design -- following that analogy, any protection against access SHOULD be placed at the entrances: the doors and windows/wall of such a library, i.e. should be external to Qiqqa itself, e.g. Operating System user account management and restricted/controlled access to the hardware on which Qiqqa runs and stores the library data (computers plus storage/HDDs). (Having publications in your library you cannot read/access, is counter to the concept of having a library in the first place.)

Following this same principle, when exporting / "sending" any library document to external parties would therefore require a security workflow (externally to Qiqqa) which applies passwords, obfuscation, blanking/redaction or whatever is deemed necessary by the user/group using that particular Qiqqa instance. None of these "need to know" restrictions will be available in the Qiqqa core.

That said, Qiqqa currently has several bugs in the PDF processing and display components, which may be triggered by "protected" PDFs of all sorts, so it is also advised from a software stability standpoint to ensure all incoming PDFs are deprotected.

If you are looking for tools that can deprotect PDFs, have a look at the qpdf toolkit. The mupdf tool kit also provides several deprotect features, but I've found that the qpdf tool is easier to use for novice/intermittent usage.

qpdf: https://github.com/qpdf/qpdf/releases