FreeBSD utility to open and fill pdf forms created in Adobe 8 +

byrnejb

byrnejb

Government pdf forms requiring Adobe 8+ to read and fill are beginning to be distributed. What utilities exist on FreeBSd to handle these?
 
Some searching lead to the right buzzwords to find software: populate fillable filler pdf. Just 'edit form' gives too many hits on making forms, but not on filling in an existing one.

Nasty thing is that without the 'right' software, it is impossible to see the form itself. Those forms detect a non-possible program (like editors/libreoffice Writer, graphics/inkscape) and display a page telling you so and directing to Adobe. The Adobe site has an online tool to upload and fill in a form. But that's not software, it is more alike giving in to bribery.

I found some solutions that use a script to list the fields to be filled in, and upload content of a spreadsheet or csv-file to populate the fields in the form. Didn't try them, but probably some script that runs on FreeBSD could do the job.

For example (?): https://github.com/altaurog/pdfforms

Apart from interoperability of government information and services, that IMHO should be platform and vendor independent.
 
graphics/ocular can fill out pdf forms, even those that are not according to the standards/RFCs (which adobe doesn't give a single f... about...).
If you build ocular without the (misleading) "purpose/share" option, it won't drag in hundreds of MB of crap (like samba) and it's 'relatively' lightweight. The bookmark feature is really nice IMO if you have to work a lot with pdf datasheets.
 
I tried this pdf: https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f1040.pdf
on okular, evince [document viewer], firefox, epiphany [gnome web], and dooble.

It wouldn't open in dooble.
Okular was able to open the document but said I needed to download a plugin, which it wasn't able to download, and I couldn't fill out the form.

The others all opened the document and allowed me to fill it in without any trouble.

Edit:

Okular actually did allow me to edit the form after it gave an error about XFA forms, asked me to show forms, and I clicked the button.
Open Menu -> View -> Show Forms
Will also work.
 
BostonBSD said:
I tried this pdf: https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f1040.pdf
on okular, evince [document viewer], firefox, epiphany [gnome web], and dooble.

It wouldn't open in dooble.
Okular was able to open the document but said I needed to download a plugin, which it wasn't able to download, and I couldn't fill out the form.

The others all opened the document and allowed me to fill it in without any trouble.
Click to expand...
XFA seems to be (has been...) quite a shitshow of non-standardization, proprietary additons/variatons and despite being urged by the ISO committee to submit the specifications, it never made it anywhere near a standard and has been completely deprecated in 2017 (!!) [1]
I don't know the legal groundbase in the US, but in the EU governments are required to provide documents and forms via open standards that don't require platform/vendor-specific tools.
TBH just do be a PITA, I'd ask them if they could provide a form that conforms to current pdf specifications and doesn't use something that has been deprecated 6 years ago; i.e. is simply usable with up-to-date pdf viewers (and not only proprietary ones with un-agreeable EULAs..). Or just play dumb and tell them (repeatedly) that you can't open/edit the form. (I.e. make them work for your money)


[1] https://pdfa.org/pdf-2-0-the-worldwide-standard-for-electronic-documents-has-evolved/
 
sko said:
XFA seems to be (has been...) quite a shitshow of non-standardization
Click to expand...
There probably are some auto-fill macros associated with XFA, which these viewers don't implement.
They only allow filling in the form by typing, if the US gov used open standards there wouldn't be any problem.
 
I just tried to open that with libreoffice draw (which can edit pdf documents) and it doesn't complain about anything and you can somewhat "fill" out the forms. I.e. you can place text over the various rectangles that should be fields. It doesn't detect any forms however - which in essence is correct, because there are none that would follow any specification/standard...
 
I tried opening that document in Okular and Evince and I got the following message:

The document you are trying to load requires Adobe Reader 8 or higher. You may not have the
Adobe Reader installed or your viewing environment may not be properly configured to use
Adobe Reader.
For information on how to install Adobe Reader and configure your viewing environment please
see http://www.adobe.com/go/pdf_forms_configure.
Click to expand...

Adobe must have inserted some way to check the reader in the document meta data.
I've never seen that before.

Anyways, it still opens like normal in Firefox and Web although the macro buttons wont work.

After filling out the form it can be saved by using the Firefox Save dialog "Save Page As" or by using Web's download button [the form data will be saved with it].
 
BostonBSD said:
Anyways, it still opens like normal in Firefox and Web although the macro buttons wont work.

After filling out the form it can be saved by using the Firefox Save dialog "Save Page As" or by using Web's download button [the form data will be saved with it].
Click to expand...
Thank you for discovering this. I had not thought of Firefox as a pdf reader.
 
...I tried another very cumbersome approach just to see the feasibility.

I have the Ubuntu linux emulation layer installed.
I installed Adobe Acrobat 9 for linux according to these instructions.

Adobe 9 does open the pdf file, however, it indicates that the document is secured.
I looked this up and it appears to require a certificate for validation.
I wasn't able to unlock the document and fill out the forms, I could only read the document.
Even if I had a certificate I'm not quite sure if it would have allowed me to fill in the forms.

I also tried installing the latest version with wine and wine64, none of those methods worked.
BTW: Atril and MuPDF have the same problem as Okular and Evince.
The reason Firefox works has something to do with the HTML5 specification.
 
If there are any adventurous people reading this they might be able to get the latest acrobat reader installed by following these instructions, after the Ubuntu emulation layer is installed.

I got as far as installing the snapd daemon, but I wasn't able to start it.
I don't know how to start a service on the emulation layer without systemd [the service command keeps complaining that snapd doesn't exist].

It looks like it uses some sort of wine layer to accomplish this.
So acrobat over wine, over Ubuntu, over FreeBSD.
Theoretically it should work and run just like a native FreeBSD application.
 
It works in Wine straight away but the tools are not labeled. (Corefonts already installed)

Screenshot_2023-12-15_23-15-44.png
 
Alexander88207 said:
It works in Wine straight away but the tools are not labeled. (Corefonts already installed)
Click to expand...
Screenshot from 2023-12-15 19-13-48.png

Which OS and version did you select?
Did you use 32 bit or 64 bit?

The closest I got was with the playonbsd wine helper program.
But it crashed with the Windows 7, English, 64 bit exe file during installation.
wine64 would crash before launching.
 
That's surprising that the United States government would require a proprietary format especially after the Microsoft docx ruling.
 
If you are truly desperate...
On a linux box, I could use Master PDF Editor. A Qt-based application. It worked really well for PDF forms. However, I doubt the appimage could be utilized on FreeBSD. Seems they only offer compiled binaries for Win, Linux, MacOS. I didn't see a link for sources.

App worked really well. I'm just disappointed there isn't a BSD offering currently.
 
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