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PDFs for reading is one thing. Fillable PDFs are evil incarnate. Apparently there are multiple ways to do it, and only Acrobat Reader is capable of making them

PDFs for reading is one thing. Fillable PDFs are evil incarnate. Apparently there are multiple ways to do it, and only Acrobat Reader is capable of making them all work. Then you have abominations like embedded flash... As a standalone file representing the format of a book, PDFs are a good format. But then PDFs can unfortunately (sometimes) store much more, and then can be a security minefield.

kxyvr 7y ago
I used to have good luck using pdftk for filling out forms and the IRS seemed to encode them well, but it looks like pdftk is mostly dead. Nowadays, evince seems to work OK, sometimes, for filling out forms. And, yes, Acrobat seems to be the only piece of software that does all of them. That said, my personal favorite for a complete screw you to the format comes from Texas and form 2382: https://hhs.texas.gov/laws-regulations/forms/2000-2999/form-2382-assisted-living-facilities-checklist https://hhs.texas.gov/laws-regulations/forms/2000-2999/form-... If you decompress it, you'll find that they encoded an HTML webpage into the PDF and, as far as I can tell, this can only be viewed on Windows with Acrobat. It's almost like Texas doesn't want people to apply for medicaid funds.
- phonon 7y ago
  They used Livecycle (XFA) forms. It's not part of the latest PDF standard. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XFA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XFA Here is a plain Acroform version :-) https://send.firefox.com/download/3d2da3ccd62d4ce9/#CJRCa5XOhZyW2mWMctlkdg https://send.firefox.com/download/3d2da3ccd62d4ce9/#CJRCa5XO...
  - kxyvr 7y ago
    Ha! Finally an answer to what these forms are. Thanks! Speaking of which, what software did you use to make the conversion? It might be nice to pass this information along to the agency to see if they'd be willing to convert all their forms.
    - justbaker 7y ago
      >It might be nice to pass this information along to the agency to see if they'd be willing to convert all their forms. If you see a way to, make them pay for it; there is money to be made.
    - phonon 7y ago
      Save file as Static PDF Form from Livecycle/AEM. (That means advanced capabilities like tables that can "grow" are removed.) Open in Acrobat Pro. Extract the pages (Shift-rightclick the thumbnails on the left side) to a new PDF. If you asked Adobe, they would say this is not possible. :-)
- swiley 7y ago
  I filled out my taxes with evince a couple years ago, it felt pretty neat using only open source software to do it (and seeing the whole form at once was way less stressful for me compared to how turbo tax does it, I know some people are the opposite though.)
morpheuskafka 7y ago
PDFs can even contain JavaScript...
- agumonkey 7y ago
  PDF can contain almost everythign
- iamnothere 7y ago
  Indeed they can: https://github.com/osnr/horrifying-pdf-experiments https://github.com/osnr/horrifying-pdf-experiments (Note, breakout game only works in Chrome's PDF reader)
- akira2501 7y ago
  PDF is the EMACS of file formats.
girzel 7y ago
Is there a reasonable, standard, lightweight way of making fillable PDFs? In theory it does seem like a reasonable extension of PDF (people send me xls spreadsheets that have been abused as forms, and I want to stab them) -- is there any non-toxic way of doing this? Perhaps with LaTeX?
- kxyvr 7y ago
  I'm not going to call it good, but I used to use FDF (forms data format) along with pdftk to fill in PDF files on the command line using a combination of Makefiles, pdfs, and fdfs. Here's the best reference I could find for the "standard": https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:std:iso:19444:-1:ed-1:v1:en https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:std:iso:19444:-1:ed-1:v1:en That said, the workflow was pretty terrible. Basically, I had to use pdftk to output from the pdf what fields were writable. Some forms like from the IRS, were pretty good at labeling things. Most other forms were terrible and there was a lot of guessing and checking. As such, this doesn't exactly answer your question, but more to comment that there was sort of a way, kind of.
bravoetch 7y ago
OSX file preview lets you fill in PDF forms with no problems, and no additional software to install.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  Depends on what it's actually doing. Preview can do actual forms, but it can also "fill" in forms by trying to detect lines and boxes.
- protomyth 7y ago
  Well, OS X Preview saves your changes even if you quit, and it has some serious issues with radio buttons in documents. It really caused quite the problem with people filling in repetitive forms. The standard "open document, add changes, print, quit" workflow that works in Office products goes very badly on OS X.
  - bdowling 7y ago
    You can turn off that auto-saving feature in system preferences. It’s called something like “Ask before saving changes.”
wyld_one 7y ago
Even as a Book format it is klunky, as it has no indexing. Take the text to speech tools and the bigger the book the slower it gets near the end of the book. I would rather have a plain ole html file with formatting flags than a PDF book.
- feikname 7y ago
  It does have indexing, which I frequently use. If your pdf book does not have it, there's some readers who can add it. e.g. https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/creating-pdf-indexes.html https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/creating-pdf-indexes.h...

kxyvr 7y ago

I used to have good luck using pdftk for filling out forms and the IRS seemed to encode them well, but it looks like pdftk is mostly dead. Nowadays, evince seems to work OK, sometimes, for filling out forms. And, yes, Acrobat seems to be the only piece of software that does all of them. That said, my personal favorite for a complete screw you to the format comes from Texas and form 2382: https://hhs.texas.gov/laws-regulations/forms/2000-2999/form-2382-assisted-living-facilities-checklist https://hhs.texas.gov/laws-regulations/forms/2000-2999/form-... If you decompress it, you'll find that they encoded an HTML webpage into the PDF and, as far as I can tell, this can only be viewed on Windows with Acrobat. It's almost like Texas doesn't want people to apply for medicaid funds.

phonon 7y ago
They used Livecycle (XFA) forms. It's not part of the latest PDF standard. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XFA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XFA Here is a plain Acroform version :-) https://send.firefox.com/download/3d2da3ccd62d4ce9/#CJRCa5XOhZyW2mWMctlkdg https://send.firefox.com/download/3d2da3ccd62d4ce9/#CJRCa5XO...
- kxyvr 7y ago
  Ha! Finally an answer to what these forms are. Thanks! Speaking of which, what software did you use to make the conversion? It might be nice to pass this information along to the agency to see if they'd be willing to convert all their forms.
  - justbaker 7y ago
    >It might be nice to pass this information along to the agency to see if they'd be willing to convert all their forms. If you see a way to, make them pay for it; there is money to be made.
  - phonon 7y ago
    Save file as Static PDF Form from Livecycle/AEM. (That means advanced capabilities like tables that can "grow" are removed.) Open in Acrobat Pro. Extract the pages (Shift-rightclick the thumbnails on the left side) to a new PDF. If you asked Adobe, they would say this is not possible. :-)
swiley 7y ago
I filled out my taxes with evince a couple years ago, it felt pretty neat using only open source software to do it (and seeing the whole form at once was way less stressful for me compared to how turbo tax does it, I know some people are the opposite though.)

morpheuskafka 7y ago

PDFs can even contain JavaScript...

agumonkey 7y ago
PDF can contain almost everythign
iamnothere 7y ago
Indeed they can: https://github.com/osnr/horrifying-pdf-experiments https://github.com/osnr/horrifying-pdf-experiments (Note, breakout game only works in Chrome's PDF reader)
akira2501 7y ago
PDF is the EMACS of file formats.

girzel 7y ago

Is there a reasonable, standard, lightweight way of making fillable PDFs? In theory it does seem like a reasonable extension of PDF (people send me xls spreadsheets that have been abused as forms, and I want to stab them) -- is there any non-toxic way of doing this? Perhaps with LaTeX?

kxyvr 7y ago
I'm not going to call it good, but I used to use FDF (forms data format) along with pdftk to fill in PDF files on the command line using a combination of Makefiles, pdfs, and fdfs. Here's the best reference I could find for the "standard": https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:std:iso:19444:-1:ed-1:v1:en https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:std:iso:19444:-1:ed-1:v1:en That said, the workflow was pretty terrible. Basically, I had to use pdftk to output from the pdf what fields were writable. Some forms like from the IRS, were pretty good at labeling things. Most other forms were terrible and there was a lot of guessing and checking. As such, this doesn't exactly answer your question, but more to comment that there was sort of a way, kind of.

bravoetch 7y ago

OSX file preview lets you fill in PDF forms with no problems, and no additional software to install.

saagarjha 7y ago
Depends on what it's actually doing. Preview can do actual forms, but it can also "fill" in forms by trying to detect lines and boxes.
protomyth 7y ago
Well, OS X Preview saves your changes even if you quit, and it has some serious issues with radio buttons in documents. It really caused quite the problem with people filling in repetitive forms. The standard "open document, add changes, print, quit" workflow that works in Office products goes very badly on OS X.
- bdowling 7y ago
  You can turn off that auto-saving feature in system preferences. It’s called something like “Ask before saving changes.”

wyld_one 7y ago

Even as a Book format it is klunky, as it has no indexing. Take the text to speech tools and the bigger the book the slower it gets near the end of the book. I would rather have a plain ole html file with formatting flags than a PDF book.

feikname 7y ago
It does have indexing, which I frequently use. If your pdf book does not have it, there's some readers who can add it. e.g. https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/creating-pdf-indexes.html https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/creating-pdf-indexes.h...