In order to be able to sign a document using Adobe Reader or Adobe Acrobat, you need a so-called signature field in your PDF, which is a special kind of form field. In order to add it to a file you have the choice between two different LaTeX packages:
The digsig
package
This is a small package that enhances the form capabilities of the hyperref
package to support signature fields. It is not available on CTAN, but you can find it on the author's website. To use it, simply add \usepackage{digsig}
to the preamble of your document (if you're already using hyperref
, load it after \usepackage{hyperref}
). Now you can add signature fields to your document using the \digsigfield
macro, which expects the width and height of the form field and a freely chosen name. Note that you have to enclose the command in a Form
environment, like this:
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{digsig}
\begin{document}
\begin{Form}
\digsigfield{5cm}{3cm}{My signature}
\end{Form}
\end{document}
The eforms
package
eforms
is another package to create PDF forms, with support for signature fields. You can find it on CTAN, but it is not included in TeX Live, so you may have to install it manually. It is very similar in use to the digsig
package:
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{eforms}
\begin{document}
\sigField{My signature}{5cm}{3cm}
\end{document}
In both cases, the output is a rectangular field you can fill with a digital signature using e.g. Adobe Reader or Adobe Acrobat:

Note that many other PDF viewers don't support these fields and won't display anything at all. A "live" example of a signature field can be found in the eforms
manual on page 17.
pdftk
, but that's kind of round-about.