Alternatives to Windows programs for government forms

[lgrant]

Recently I was applying online for an absentee ballot, and the U.S. Government site say "You must have Adobe Acrobat Reader." That is obviously not true; Unix, Linux, and I believe MacOS all have non-Adobe tools for reading PDFs. I suspect whoever build the website did not know this.

I am probably preaching to the choir when I say that requiring Acrobat Reader is bad, because it is like the Government giving Microsoft a monopoly. It also makes things difficult for those who do not have Windows system, like my brother, who moved from Window to Linux years ago, or even me, who has a Windows machine in addition to the FreeBSD machine, but which is down waiting for parts for a month.

I would like to see an organization that would collate the equivalents to Microsoft tools on various platforms, and educate the government about them. I could put together a list, and send it to various U.S. Government agencies, and I suspect it would be ignored. What is needed is something that will write news articles and widely publish information about alternatives, and lean on the Government to mention them on form, or even better, start using open source software, like Switzerland has.

Under the theory of "The squeaky wheel gets to supply the grease," I should probably set something up, but I am 72 years old (old enough to be President!), retired, and spend most of my time taking care of my wife, who is recovering from a stroke, so I do not have the bandwidth to start an organization. I wonder if one of the organizations that promotes open source could do something like this.

 

[SirDice]

That is obviously not true; Unix, Linux, and I believe MacOS all have non-Adobe tools for reading PDFs.

It's not the only PDF reader on Windows either. There are plenty of alternatives.

 

[Cthulhux]

I actually use MuPDF on Windows.

 

[scottro]

I vaguely remember filling in my form--it would have been on FreeBSD, using firefox. I usually use zathura for reading pdfs, especially pdf versions of books, but will use mupdf for simple forms. The only part of what the OP said with which I'd disagree is that I'm almost certain Adobe has a version for Mac, and they used to have one for Linux, don't know if they still do.
There are various, though probably not organized, websites that do have lists like lgrant mentions. A cursory websearch shows several with titles like Best Open Source tools to replace MS Office and the like.

 

[ralphbsz]

Recently I was applying online for an absentee ballot, and the U.S. Government site ...

Strange. Absentee ballots are usually issued by the registrar of voters. Those are not US Government agencies, but local agencies. I think in many states, the registrar of voters is a county level function, but it might also be a state or city agency. So I would guess that there are several thousand government sites in the US, all different and run by different agencies, all of which are used to apply for an absentee ballot.

and the U.S. Government site say "You must have Adobe Acrobat Reader."

Really? Did they say that using software other than Adobe Acrobat Reader is a crime? Did they say that anything else wouldn't work? Or did they say that it is known to work with Adobe Acrobat Reader, and that is the only "supported" tool, where "supported" means: if you call them on the phone to ask why it didn't work, they can only help you use Adobe Acrobat Reader, and not other software.

That is obviously not true; Unix, Linux, and I believe MacOS all have non-Adobe tools for reading PDFs.

As do Windows and MacOS. Matter-of-fact, I have not installed Acrobat Reader in about 15 years, since I started using a Mac, since the PDF reader that comes with MacOS does everything I need, including filling out forms. And Windows these days also has a built-in PDF reader, which is part of the Edge web browser. So in reality, I don't see a need to install Adobe Acrobat Reader, ever. Perhaps except for edge cases of unusual documents that are not standard conforming and only work with specific readers.

Furthermore, Adobe Acrobat Reader is actually available on many OSes other than Windows: It is available for MacOS, and for various Linux distributions.

I am probably preaching to the choir when I say that requiring Acrobat Reader is bad, because it is like the Government giving Microsoft a monopoly.

Wrong on various counts. First, most likely the agency web site does not actually require Acrobat reader, but suggests it, and supports it. Second, if anything it gives Adobe a monopoly, not the OSes on which Adobe Acrobat Reader runs (of which there are several).

But we also need to recognize that we are in a world in which there is a de-facto duopoly of desktop environment. If I remember the numbers right, excluding phones and tablets, Windows has about 75% market share, MacOS about 15% market share. Next highest are Chrome and Linux at about 4% each (and Chrome is a funny OS, because you can't install applications such as Adobe Acrobat Reader), and the rest is unknown (there is probably 0.05% FreeBSD in there). So in practice there are only two relevant desktop OSes. Demanding that every business and every government agency cater to a small number of unusual OSes is pushing the onus to the wrong participant: it creates a large support headache for agencies that are already underfunded and straining to perform their core mission.

I would like to see an organization that would collate the equivalents to Microsoft tools on various platforms, and educate the government about them.

You are talking about "the government". At least in the US, such a thing does not exist, because it is all so fragmented. There are literally tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of agencies (the number of registrars of voters alone is several thousand).

or even better, start using open source software, like Switzerland has.

Which one? There are literally dozens of open source PDF renderers. I just looked at FreshPorts for the keyword "PDF", and 97 packages were found (of which many aren't screen readers but converters). Telling a small local agency (which probably has only 1 or 2 people working in IT) that a small niche operating operating system (such as FreeBSD, probably used by less than a dozen people in their district) has 19 different PDF readers available is not useful.

I wonder if one of the organizations that promotes open source could do something like this.

Again, there are so many. Do you think the Linux foundation has any interest in education government agencies about which PDF readers to use on FreeBSD? Or which *FREE* (meaning open source) readers to use on Windows or MacOS?

Ah, here is another observation: The problem is lack of STANDARDS! If only the PDF format was an international standard, then we could instead of telling people to use Adobe Acrobat Reader, to use any standard-conforming reader. Alas, there are multiple PDF standards: the one originally pushed by Adobe, and then later the one pushed by one of the standards bodies (and I don't remember whether it is ANSI, ECMA or ISO). No problem, let's create another standard that will supersede each other. Which leads exactly to the problem of proliferation of standards. And then let's create another government agency that checks whether PDF readers conform to those standards. And then lets pass laws that all government agencies have to only recommend PDF readers that are recommended by the government agency that validates PDF readers according to the new standards body we created.

I think the real answer has to be much simpler: People who maintain web sites need to recognize that PDF has become a common and standard document format, that all relevant OSes that ship these days have built-in PDF readers, and stop putting comments about Adobe Acrobat Reader on their web pages. Time will take care of that.

 

[vienuolis]

I wonder if one of the organizations that promotes open source could do something like this.

There is The Web Standards Project (WaSP, since 1998) and a few of similar public organizations educating governments, universities and so on.

 

[%pupil -sceptical]

I also do government forms as PDFs, especially for the registration for absent voting for over seventeen years now, and I also don't use any Acrobat Reader for over ten years or so, anymore.
All you need is some PDF-Viewer capable of letting you fill out the form, which many (almost all?) do, also under FreeBSD; at least the one you can have within your browser.

'Adobe' is just a simply simplified suggestion ('...use a PDF-reader, e.g. Adobe Acrobat [link]...') for to keep the idiot-proof instructions as simple as possible.
Most (Windows)-users are already overchallenged when there is more than one choice, and cry for technical help at the latest, if some-one accidantely just mentioned there is also other OSs.
They don't know such 'complex hacker-stuff'.
They have a computer - period

I cannot imagine some bureaucrat will ever take a look at the PDF file's information, nor even get back to you:
"Uh-uh. No! Not made with Adobe Acrobat. Not acceptable."
I rather bet 90% of them don't even know there is such
And if so, "forge" it.
Write "Adobe Acrobat Reader" in it.
And if you're a real teaser, give it additionally something special, like v1.0.1, and "Commodore C64"

 

[blackbird9]

I think saying "you must have acrobat reader" is just a default statement for a non-technical audience who have no knowledge of any other ways to read pdf's; it's just telling you that they are going to send you a pdf. And they don't say "acrobat writer" so presumably you're going to print it off, fill it in by hand and post it back, not edit the pdf directly on the pc.

Whenever I get those type of things I view them with mupdf (nowadays, used to use xpdf) and use libreoffice to edit them, if the file can be edited, sometimes libreoffice barfs and refuses to edit the file. In those cases I print it off, fill it in by hand, and then either post it or if they want softcopy scan it to a pdf with xsane and send the scanned pdf back. Xsane is in <graphics/xsane>, very useful, and works nicely with one of the low-cost '3-in-1' type laser printer/copier/scanners.

 

[xchris]

Furthermore, Adobe Acrobat Reader is actually available on many OSes other than Windows: It is available for MacOS, and for various Linux distributions.

on Linux nope, unless you mean that ancient version 9.5xx of Acrobat Reader, that even was only i386 binaries. Someone can try installing Acrobat Reader under wine .