Date format in digital signature

Here's a series of articles on useing dates in Acrobat JavaScript.

http://www.acrobatusers.com/tech_corners/javascript_corner/tips/2006/date_time_part1/

part 2 discusses date formatting.

Thom Parker
The source for PDF Scripting Info
[url=http://www.pdfScripting.com]pdfscripting.com[/url]

The Acrobat JavaScript Reference, Use it Early and Often
[url=http://www.adobe.com/devnet/acrobat/]http://www.adobe.com/devnet/acrobat/[/url]

For the signature field using a digital certificate for international commerce I believe the date, time and UTC offset are all a legal requirement so the exact signing date and time can be verified.

But, if you are using a stamp for non-legal purposes, you can make a dynamic stamp with any date or time format you want to use.

Thank you for your answers, but I'm still lost in javascript and all procedures for changing date format. I don't want a dynamic stamp, I would like to have exactly the same process that the digital signature except the format dd/mm/yyyy instead of "yyyy.mm.dd time GMT"

I do not want a user action just set up this a a default for all my users. Up to now I think I have understood that the API DigSig.api is the plugin where everything is hardcoded. I'm not developer so do you think there is an EASY way to change this format date. Or do I have to use the SDK with Acrobat 8 Plugin Wizard in which I do not understand anything ;)

To be honest I wouldn't have believed that changing a format date was so complicated :(

I keep searching from my side for an easy solution but it's somebody knows exactly how to procees, please give me more clues...

Thank you.

What you want to do is to change the digital signatures appearance. There is in fact a whole document about this.

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/acrobat/pdfs/PPKAppearances.pdf

I'm not clear that this is easy.

Thom Parker
The source for PDF Scripting Info
[url=http://www.pdfScripting.com]pdfscripting.com[/url]

The Acrobat JavaScript Reference, Use it Early and Often
[url=http://www.adobe.com/devnet/acrobat/]http://www.adobe.com/devnet/acrobat/[/url]

Thank you for your clarification. I think I'm gonna keep the standard signature appearance :(

You are right this doesn't seem to be an easy change...

So I'm giving up...

Don't give up yet. Here's a "How To" document. What you want to do might be simpler than you think.

http://www.aces.edu/ctu/techref/software/acrobat/5.x/SampleSignatures.pdf

Thom Parker
The source for PDF Scripting Info
[url=http://www.pdfScripting.com]pdfscripting.com[/url]

The Acrobat JavaScript Reference, Use it Early and Often
[url=http://www.adobe.com/devnet/acrobat/]http://www.adobe.com/devnet/acrobat/[/url]

Thank you very much for your help Thomp, but I spent few more hours to check documentation and as I told I'm not a developper. The only interesting thing I've found is to download the SDK package and open the source file DigSigHFT.h from the Digsig.api .

Inside there is a line :

#define PROP_DSSigProp_Date "M" /* PDF Date format, time of signing */

and the "M" may be the parameter to modify.... Now no ideas of what would be the right parameter for me, and worse I really don't know how to rebuild the source file to get the new DigSig.api plugin ....

If the above can help somebody, it's great but now I definetely give up.

Tanks anyway for driving me.

For not being a developer you're doing pretty good. Searching through C++ include files is not for whimps;)

I looked over the documentation and it doesn't seem that you can change the date format without writing a signature plug-in. How strange, I thought it might be like creating a custom stamp, which would have put it in the realm of the average user. But it looks like this one is out of range for most:(

Thom Parker
The source for PDF Scripting Info
[url=http://www.pdfScripting.com]pdfscripting.com[/url]

The Acrobat JavaScript Reference, Use it Early and Often
[url=http://www.adobe.com/devnet/acrobat/]http://www.adobe.com/devnet/acrobat/[/url]

Thom,
I am in the same boat -- want to change the date format, but am JavaScript challenged. Do you know if anyone has developed such a plug-in to change the date format?

I do not think this is possible.

This is a international date time stamp of when this document was signed and that format needs to be standardized and usable around the world. The format is pretty standard for international commerce, government, flight, or military operations. From the data provided and it's format, anyone around the world can tell when the document was signed in terms of the UTC time or the previous GMT time standard or the Zulu time zone and from that information one can convert the displayed value to their local time. This information can be critical in establishing the order of events, when one accepted a contract, when on gave a notice of some kind, etc and this information can be used in a court of law either locally or in any other location.