Bug 141884

Description:
The default is that LibreOffice exports text to PDF files. The text can be copied and inserted into other files.
This is exactly the step I suggest to make harder to hinder content beeing copied to other files.

Steps to Reproduce:
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Actual Results:
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Expected Results:
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Reproducible: Always


User Profile Reset: No



Additional Info:
Right now when a file (eg. in writer) is exported to PDF, the text is exported as text. That makes copying the text rather trivial.
Also copying images is a piece of cake.

My suggestion is to make the copy&paste step harder or maybe even as hard as possible (depending on how far you want to go).

Harder:
I'm not sure if this is the best way, but I would suggest an option that exports the full (eg. writer) page as image and said image is used in the PDF file to cover the entire page. So you actually take a screenshot of the page and include the screenshot rather than the actual text.

Hard as possible:
To make work harder for OCR software some kind of random noise pattern (wavy lines, dots, etc.) could be added to the background that don't hinder reading that much, but would maybe throw off OCR software a bit. Of course this would only work up to a certain point without hindering human readability that much.

Why do we need that:
I'm sure LibreOffice is used in many cases where the author wants a bit more control over how easy the information in the file can be copied. Maybe the author has written some instruction paper that he wants to sell and wants to make sure that the instructions can not be copy&pasted to some forum that easily.
For my part the 'a bit more control over how easy the information in the file can be copied' is exactly what I would like to see.

Personally I would be fine with the 'Harder' step, since it's a clear step up and I'm not sure if there is a real need for the step 'Hard as possible'. Moreover the further you decrease readability for OCR software, the harder it will be to read the same text for humans as well.