Question

We are working on an application which processes PDF documents. One of the features is adding annotations on the documents, and controlling the visibilty of the annotations based on the user viewing the document.

Do the PDF specs support this?

EDIT:
This Is Desktop application which will have an embedded PDF viewer some metadata are stored remotely others are hidden in the document we need to make the application able to display specific information based on the user who Is using the App.

Answer 1

You can create the PDF with the annotation disabled by default. You can add Acrobat Javascript that prompts for a password, based on which the annotations can be displayed or kept hidden.

UPDATE: I didn’t realize that the JS for this solution tries to save the annotation changes to the document. For this reason, it will not work in Adobe Reader. In Adobe Acrobat, the following code works.

var sResponse = app.response({cQuestion: "What's the secret password?", cTitle: "Secert Annotation", cLabel: "Password" });
this.syncAnnotScan(); 
if (sResponse == "one") { 
  var oAnnot = this.getAnnots()[0]; 
  if (oAnnot == null) { app.alert('not found'); } 
  else { oAnnot.noView =false; }
} 

Adobe Lifecycle Extensions claim to provide this functionality to Adobe Reader. I have not used this software yet but you can give it a try.