I'm using TexShop (Mac OS 10.5) to typeset a manuscript and I would like to share the generated PDF with some colleagues. In the process, I would like to add some comments to the generated PDF and allow my colleagues to do the same. The freely available Acrobat Reader has commenting functionality, but apparently the PDF must explicitly allow commenting (and probably other forms of editing as well). Is there a way that I can tell TexShop and/or the underlying Tex distribution to typeset the PDF with the proper permissions?
As an alternative, I just discovered the todonotes package, with which pop-up comments can be added to the source code and created when the document is originally typeset. This will work for me and perhaps one other colleague, but it's unlikely that I will be able to get all of my colleagues to pull the tex source from my git repo and edit it…so my original question remains.
Best Answer
Not if the PDF has to be editable with Adobe Reader (there are free readers that allow this, though - e.g. Foxit Reader). Adobe Reader only allows this if the PDF has been created by Adobe products; the PDFs have to be digitally signed with a key by Adobe. See the Wikipedia and a detailed explanation.