PDF Redactor is a separately licensable Add-on that offers options to remove
(not just covering or obscuring) content within a region of PDF.
With printed pages, redaction involves blacking-out or cutting-out areas of
the printed page. With electronic documents that use formats such as PDF,
redaction typically involves removing sensitive content within documents for
safe distribution to courts, patent and government institutions, the media,
customers, vendors or any other audience with restricted access to the content.
The redaction process in PDFNet consists of two steps:
- Content identification: A user applies redact annotations that specify the
pieces or regions of content that should be removed. The content for redaction
can be identified either interactively (e.g. using 'pdftron.PDF.PDFViewCtrl'
as shown in PDFView sample) or programmatically (e.g. using 'pdftron.PDF.TextSearch'
or 'pdftron.PDF.TextExtractor'). Up until the next step is performed, the user
can see, move and redefine these annotations.
- Content removal: Using 'pdftron.PDF.Redactor.Redact()' the user instructs
PDFNet to apply the redact regions, after which the content in the area specified
by the redact annotations is removed. The redaction function includes number of
options to control the style of the redaction overlay (including color, text,
font, border, transparency, etc.).
PDFTron Redactor makes sure that if a portion of an image, text, or vector graphics
is contained in a redaction region, that portion of the image or path data is
destroyed and is not simply hidden with clipping or image masks. PDFNet API can also
be used to review and remove metadata and other content that can exist in a PDF
document, including XML Forms Architecture (XFA) content and Extensible Metadata
Platform (XMP) content.