Use-Case of "Signatures and Initials"

[SB-GFP]

Hello Community, Hello Devs

I was wondering what the use case for adding a signature from the "Signatures and Initials" (https://help.pdf-xchange.com/pdfxe8/ind ... ls_ed.html) pane is.

There are digital signatures and there are stamps and we are using both to *sign* documents.
To me it seems that Signatures and Initials are just another kind of stamp. Am I wrong?

Cheers, Sebastian

[Stefan - PDF-XChange]

Hello SB-GFP,

These "Signatures and Initials" are a way for people to add physical/visible signatures to their files without the need of a digital certificate to be attached to it. They are also added as base content objects, and not as annotations, so they would be printed when e.g. "Document only" is selected in the print dialogue.

Kind regards,
Stefan

[SB-GFP]

Hello Stefan

So the only difference from the user's perspective is the printing behaviour?
Also, this.getAnnots() does return an object which appears to be a stamp-ish object with reduced properties

Cheers, Sebastian

[Daniel - PDF-XChange]

Hello, SB-GFP

Essentially yes, It is an item mentioned in the PDF specification, and so it has been implemented according to those rules. It was not our own creative reasoning, but simply a matter of course, so we cannot really offer much more than speculation on the "reason" or intended use case of it, as much as a stock "this is how it works" response.

Kind regards,