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“After entering data into these fields you can download the file to have the filled out version saved to your computer.” What’s the use case? Printing out fill

“After entering data into these fields you can download the file to have the filled out version saved to your computer.” What’s the use case? Printing out filled-in forms? But otherwise, who would want the PDF in electronic format? It doesn’t seem like a practical way for users to submit data.

detaro 6y ago
Printing is one use case. Also plenty places that want filled out forms uploaded, e-mailed, ... + it allows you to keep a copy with what you entered.
- getpost 6y ago
  That's my point. Other than printing a nice looking form (which includes faxing), the content of the field data is hard to reuse. Searching PDF content on your own hard drive is problematic. Are there utilities that extract PDF field data and submit it to a database? I'd be grateful to see examples. What about field validation? The PDF may have some minor validation, but that's no substitute for the validation done in a DBMS. If you want users to be able to save a nice looking form, you'd still want the data entered online directly into a DBMS. I'd offer a "download PDF of your input" as an option, for example.
  - toyg 6y ago
    > the content of the field data is hard to reuse. A lot of people don't care, because they come from forms in cartaceous - where they have to manually retype everything anyway. For many, their "DBMS" will be an Excel sheet with a dozen rows. The more advanced types likely have some Adobe software that does all the magic. Fillable PDF forms are really seen as a courtesy to users more than anything particularly useful to the emitter.
  - detaro 6y ago
    Sure, its a structured format, so you totally can extract the individual fields. AFAIK Adobe sells a server product that does that, but I'm sure there's competitors and I have seen the underlying parsing in feature in PDF libraries before. That said, plenty of users of PDFs have a very paper-based/manual workflow still, and not the motivation and expertise to run and update an online form thing. Or they need to have the ability to handle odd inputs anyways, because paper forms have even worse input validation. And from a browser/user perspective, the feature here is useful because people expect me to handle PDFs and do not provide nice web forms. They might have terrible reasons for doing so, but I still need to live with that.
brainwad 6y ago
Well, if the form needs to be faxed (still a thing!) then having the filled PDF makes it easy to use an e-fax service. But I assume sending the file to another computer for printing is the main use case.
pbhjpbhj 6y ago
Last year applying for jobs most places had a pdf form, if you were lucky it was an actual form too! So, filling the form and emailing it back is useful -- much better than trying to overwrite text with a PDF background; far better than printing the form, filling with a pen, scanning, then sending.

detaro 6y ago

Printing is one use case. Also plenty places that want filled out forms uploaded, e-mailed, ... + it allows you to keep a copy with what you entered.

getpost 6y ago
That's my point. Other than printing a nice looking form (which includes faxing), the content of the field data is hard to reuse. Searching PDF content on your own hard drive is problematic. Are there utilities that extract PDF field data and submit it to a database? I'd be grateful to see examples. What about field validation? The PDF may have some minor validation, but that's no substitute for the validation done in a DBMS. If you want users to be able to save a nice looking form, you'd still want the data entered online directly into a DBMS. I'd offer a "download PDF of your input" as an option, for example.
- toyg 6y ago
  > the content of the field data is hard to reuse. A lot of people don't care, because they come from forms in cartaceous - where they have to manually retype everything anyway. For many, their "DBMS" will be an Excel sheet with a dozen rows. The more advanced types likely have some Adobe software that does all the magic. Fillable PDF forms are really seen as a courtesy to users more than anything particularly useful to the emitter.
- detaro 6y ago
  Sure, its a structured format, so you totally can extract the individual fields. AFAIK Adobe sells a server product that does that, but I'm sure there's competitors and I have seen the underlying parsing in feature in PDF libraries before. That said, plenty of users of PDFs have a very paper-based/manual workflow still, and not the motivation and expertise to run and update an online form thing. Or they need to have the ability to handle odd inputs anyways, because paper forms have even worse input validation. And from a browser/user perspective, the feature here is useful because people expect me to handle PDFs and do not provide nice web forms. They might have terrible reasons for doing so, but I still need to live with that.

brainwad 6y ago

Well, if the form needs to be faxed (still a thing!) then having the filled PDF makes it easy to use an e-fax service. But I assume sending the file to another computer for printing is the main use case.

pbhjpbhj 6y ago

Last year applying for jobs most places had a pdf form, if you were lucky it was an actual form too! So, filling the form and emailing it back is useful -- much better than trying to overwrite text with a PDF background; far better than printing the form, filling with a pen, scanning, then sending.