[Tex/LaTex] Is there some way to embed LaTeX source code in a PDF file

attachfileembeddingpdfsource

Several times now I have inadvertently lost the .tex file that generated a PDF file with pdflatex. Given what I know of the internal structure of PDF files, it should be possible to embed a text file containing the original LaTeX file into the PDF file so that it can be extracted later.

I am aware of no technology for doing this, but perhaps you are. Does anybody have something like this?

Best Answer

The package embedall has been made exactly for that:

Just include

\usepackage{embedall}

just before \begin{document} and it will embed all graphics, listings, and the tex source.

side note: The CTAN tag archival has more related tools listed. For instance, mkjobtexmf saves all .sty files. They could be embedded in the PDF, but I am unsure whether that's overkill. The package skb proposes a new kind of workflow, which does not really seem to tackle your issue.

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[Tex/LaTex] Is it possible to embed (attach) a file password protected in a PDF

It seems that there is not such thing as native encryption (binary or text) of files from TeX. An option would be to issue a command before compilation or a shell command in order to encrypt the file before it is embedded. Doing a little further research I found that there are indeed ways to specify the password non interactively

 \documentclass[]{article}
 \usepackage{embedfile}
 \immediate\write18{zip -j -e -P mypassword -r \jobname.tex.zeep \jobname.tex}
 \embedfile{\jobname.tex.zeep}
 \begin{document}
 bla
 \end{document}

 $ zip -j -e -P mypassword -r $0.zeep $0
 $ pdflatex -shell-escape $0

zip can also be replaced by openssl des3 -salt -pass pass:mypassword -in $0 -out $0.de3;

zip is nicer because it opens from the PDF reader using just a double click on the attachments. I also use the extension zeep to avoid stupid email filters.

This is not extremely secure because the password will be visible (still not for the person receiving only the PDF), hopefully it will be a simple passphrase easy to remember at any point.

Thanks Paulo for the inspiration.

[Tex/LaTex] setting the ‘filename’ of a file embedded in a PDF using the attachfile package

I haven't tried to get TeX to automatically parse the filename component for you (but if you're interested, I'm sure someone else could help with that), but the following patches the \textattachfile macro to require an extra argument, the name of the file as it should appear in the attachment, which has no relation to the name of the file on the hard disk when the PDF is created. That is, the syntax is now \textattachfile[options]{physicalfilepath}{text}{virtualfilename}.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{attachfile}
\makeatletter

\def\atfi@textattachfile@i#1#2#3#4{%
    \setkeys{AtFi}{#1}%
    \atfi@embedfile{#2}%
    \def\atfi@textcolor(##1 ##2 ##3)##4{%
      \textcolor[rgb]{##1,##2,##3}{##4}}%
    \atfi@set@appearance{%
      \expandafter\atfi@textcolor\expandafter
      (\atfi@color@rgb){#3\strut}}%
    \atfi@flags@to@int
    \atfi@insert@file@annot{\detokenize{#4}}%
  \endgroup
}
\makeatother

\begin{document}
% now have to pass an extra argument to \textattachfile, the filename you want the viewer to see (note that Adobe Reader appears to 'hide' the path component)
\textattachfile[author=Zapp Brannigan, color=0 0 0]{my_directory/my_file.dat}{\detokenize{my_file.dat}}{filename_seen_by_viewer.txt}
\end{document}

In your case, you would probably want to change filename_seen_by_viewer.txt to my_file.dat, but I left it like this to illustrate more clearly.

(Just grepping the PDF file for my_directory should be sufficient to indicate that it works.)

Best Answer

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[Tex/LaTex] Is it possible to embed (attach) a file password protected in a PDF

[Tex/LaTex] setting the ‘filename’ of a file embedded in a PDF using the attachfile package

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