How do you programmatically "enable for commenting"?

Question

I have seen a million forum posts where people want to programmatically enable their pdfs for commenting, and the answer is: use LiveCycle.  We are considering buying LiveCycle for our server JUST for this purpose, since there doesn't seem to be any other way to do it.  Before we do, I want to know how it would work.  Since I don't have livecylce, I can't very well poke around and figure it out, and I don't see any free trial downloads.  Can anyone explain how you would go about this task?  On the other hand, isn't the pdf an open document standard?  Is there any way to modify the pdf "under the hood" to enable it for commenting, without using the Acrobat menu item?

Answer 1

TO programmatically apply uage rights to a PDF document, see the topic named Applying Usage Rights to PDF Documents located at the following URL:
http://livedocs.adobe.com/livecycle/8.2/programLC/programmer/help/000411.html
This will explain what to do and will lead you to the following Java code example:
* This Java Quick Start uses the following JAR files
* 1. adobe-reader-extensions-client.jar
* 2. adobe-livecycle-client.jar
* 3. adobe-usermanager-client.jar
* 4. adobe-utilities.jar
* 5. jbossall-client.jar (use a different JAR file if LiveCycle ES is not deployed
* on JBoss)
* These JAR files are located in the following path:
* <install directory>/Adobe/LiveCycle8/LiveCycle_ES_SDK/client-libs
* For complete details about the location of these JAR files,
* see "Including LiveCycle ES library files" in Programming
* with LiveCycle ES
import com.adobe.livecycle.readerextensions.client.*;
import java.util.*;
import java.io.File;
import java.io.FileInputStream;
import com.adobe.idp.Document;
import com.adobe.idp.dsc.clientsdk.ServiceClientFactory;
import com.adobe.idp.dsc.clientsdk.ServiceClientFactoryProperties;
public class ApplyUsageRights{
     public static void main(String[] args) {
       try{
            //Set connection properties required to invoke LiveCycle ES                                        
            Properties connectionProps = new Properties();
            connectionProps.setProperty(ServiceClientFactoryProperties.DSC_DEFAULT_EJB_ENDPOINT, "jnp://localhost:1099");
            connectionProps.setProperty(ServiceClientFactoryProperties.DSC_TRANSPORT_PROTOCOL,ServiceClientFactoryProperties.DSC_EJB_PROTOCOL);         
            connectionProps.setProperty(ServiceClientFactoryProperties.DSC_SERVER_TYPE, "JBoss");
            connectionProps.setProperty(ServiceClientFactoryProperties.DSC_CREDENTIAL_USERNAME, "administrator");
            connectionProps.setProperty(ServiceClientFactoryProperties.DSC_CREDENTIAL_PASSWORD, "password");
            //Create a ServiceClientFactory object
            ServiceClientFactory myFactory = ServiceClientFactory.createInstance(connectionProps);
            //Create a ReaderExtensionsServiceClient object
            ReaderExtensionsServiceClient reClient = new ReaderExtensionsServiceClient(myFactory);
            //Retrieve the PDF document to which to apply usage rights
            FileInputStream fileInputStream = new FileInputStream("C:\\Adobe\\Loan.pdf");
            Document inputPDF = new Document(fileInputStream);
            //Create a UsageRight object and specify specific usage rights
            UsageRights useRight = new UsageRights();
            useRight.setEnabledDynamicFormFields(true);
            useRight.setEnabledComments(true);
            useRight.setEnabledFormFillIn(true);
            useRight.setEnabledDigitalSignatures(true);
            //Create a ReaderExtensionsOptions object
            ReaderExtensionsOptionSpec reOptions = new ReaderExtensionsOptionSpec();
            //Set the usage rights
            reOptions.setUsageRights(useRight);
            reOptions.setMessage("This is a Rights-Enabled PDF Document");
            //Apply usage rights to a PDF document
            Document rightsEnabledPDF = reClient.applyUsageRights(
                 inputPDF,
                 "RE2",
               null,
               reOptions);
            //Create a new PDF file that represents the rights-enabled PDF document
            File resultFile = new File("C:\\Adobe\\Critique5.pdf");
            rightsEnabledPDF.copyToFile(resultFile);
          }catch (Exception e) {
                e.printStackTrace();