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[Discussion] Acrobat PDF forms support

TLDR: I recently found out there is “deprecated” XFA format that acrobat still uses in their programs, and government forms have those for dynamic contents in the form that we cannot fill using other softwares. Looking for solutions.

This has been a problem since a long time. Back in 2020 I had dual boot because I needed acrobat to fill PDF forms, but after finding xournal++ program I nuked windows partition. Windows update messing up grub was one of the reason I decided to nuke windows and looking at the posts recently it’s still a huge issue.

So the problem I recently encountered is that even the government issued PDF forms need acrobat reader (which is free software for PDF, but only available in windows and mac). Which I didn’t think would be an issue and just filled the form in Firefox.

Turns out that was problematic as the PDF forms has fields that are automatically filled, calculated from other fields, only made available when certain checkboxes are checked, etc. and Firefox doesn’t support that. Even trying to install the acrobat reader snap (which uses wine) in a VM and opening the PDF on it didn’t work. The UI makes me think it’s a really old version of the reader.

So without searching for other devices (and filling a PDF with my sensitive information) what solution is there? Installing windows is a hassle even in a VM, and it will use up precious SSD memory. But that’s the only solution I can think of.

I also found masterpdf or something like that which the Arch wiki says has support for that, but it didn’t work. It says XFA forms are converted to acro forms, and the dynamic part doesn’t work. There are websites that promise to work for such forms, but I’m not going to be putting sensitive info on web apps.

Sanctus ,
@Sanctus@lemmy.world avatar

Stirling PDF maybe?

boredsquirrel ,
@boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net avatar

Fuck adobe, this has nothing to do with PDF.

You can install the reader in a VM and copy the files to a WINE instance.

The youtuber mattscreative does that for photoshop, affinity and more. Photoshop is paid, so acrobat should absolutely work.

He uses KDE Plasma on Fedora afaik.

Follow the photoshop guide which uses a custom WINE version.

thevoidzero OP ,

I know it’s adobe problem. Because they deprecated it in PDF 2.0, last support is in 1.7, but they have continued using 1.7 with adobe extension 1 to 1.7 with Adobe extension 8. So it’s like they have their own branch of PDF versions. But most people don’t care, and here a government agency is using that and it’s not accessible for linux.

Wine needs 32bit libraries that’s why I’m not using it. I read the snap package handles the wine part for us, so I tried that in VM but didn’t work. I’ll try to follow your suggestion in VM and see if it’ll work.

boredsquirrel ,
@boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net avatar

Yes bottles flatpak also pulls in 32bit dependencies

AmbiguousProps ,

Does it open in LibreOffice draw? If so you can just fill the form with text boxes if the text boxes in the form aren’t already fillable.

thevoidzero OP ,

Draw seems to disregard the form fields, so I could probably fill it in Firefox, and use draw to edit the auto calculated fields. It’ll work for printed forms, but if any org uses pdf fields extractor wouldn’t that be a problem?

AmbiguousProps ,

Possibly, it would probably depend on the extractor and business - I would hope that most businesses would catch that the fields weren’t filled out during extraction if extraction is something they normally do. I would expect it’s something that happens with pdf extraction and they’d have a human go in and check it in those cases. Of course, for humans that doesn’t matter, so if only humans are viewing it, I think you’d be good.

thevoidzero OP ,

Yeah. I’m just worried when extractor fails they put it in discard pile, or human pile which’ll delay my application by a lot.

FrostyPolicy ,
@FrostyPolicy@suppo.fi avatar

Have you tried Okular?

thevoidzero OP ,

Ocular shows a warning ⚠️ this file requires new version of adobe acrobat DC, press ok to download latest version or see your system administrator.

ProtonBadger ,

Yeah I gave up and installed Windows in a VM, I use it for those annoying forms and some old tax software… My kid also wants to use powerpoint occationally. It’s quick and easy to install in a VM though and doesn’t take up much space but I got a lot of room on my SSD so everything is relative.

I’d like a Linux solution for the forms but it’s still convenient to have a Windows VM once in a blue moon.

thevoidzero OP ,

Installing it is such a hassle, and booting is too, I used to just close while saving state, but that messes up the time in VM and it leads to problems… Is there any light weight basic windows type VM you use? Or is it the generic iso?

cmnybo ,

I would just print it, fill it out by hand and scan it. Make them do the extra work if they send a PDF that doesn’t work in your software.

thevoidzero OP ,

Some parts already have filled text that are dynamic fields (but without the support it becomes fixed text). So I can’t write over it. And Firefox doesn’t recognize them as fields, otherwise I could delete the part. It’s so frustrating.

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