(f29) I need something, preferably from one of the usual repos (so I can easily install it with dnf), that I can use to fill in a pdf form. I can view the form just fine, but nothing seems to have functionality for me to fill it in. I did not see anything in "dnfdragora".
On Wed, Jun 05, 2019 at 07:54:39PM -0600, home user via users wrote:
(f29) I need something, preferably from one of the usual repos (so I can easily install it with dnf), that I can use to fill in a pdf form. I can view the form just fine, but nothing seems to have functionality for me to fill it in. I did not see anything in "dnfdragora".
evince
(Fred Smith said)
evince
Thank-you, Fred.
hmmmm.... ---------- -bash.3[~]: dnf install evince Last metadata expiration check: 0:52:01 ago on Wed 05 Jun 2019 07:15:38 PM MDT. Package evince-3.30.2-2.fc29.x86_64 is already installed. Dependencies resolved. Nothing to do. Complete! -bash.4[~]: ---------- So I already have it. When in Gnome, I look for evince, I get "Document Viewer". Document Viewer does not allow me to fill in the pdf form. The company representative that sent me the pdf file told me it is fill-in enabled.
On 06/05/2019 07:54 PM, home user via users wrote:
I need something, preferably from one of the usual repos (so I can easily install it with dnf), that I can use to fill in a pdf form. I can view the form just fine, but nothing seems to have functionality for me to fill it in. I did not see anything in "dnfdragora".
Try xournal.
On 6/5/19 7:17 PM, home user via users wrote:
So I already have it. When in Gnome, I look for evince, I get "Document Viewer". Document Viewer does not allow me to fill in the pdf form. The company representative that sent me the pdf file told me it is fill-in enabled.
It's likely the new proprietary Adobe form. If that's the case, you can only use the Adobe app on Windows, or possibly Mac or Android.
On 6/5/19 10:15 PM, Joe Zeff wrote:
On 06/05/2019 08:45 PM, home user via users wrote:
(Joe Zeff said) > Try xournal.
Installed it. Tried it. Displays the document/form, but does not seem to provide functionality to fill it in
Try clicking on the T on the toolbar, to put it into Text mode.
Isn't that just writing text over top of the pdf content? It's not filling in the forms. Often the forms have some javascript code as well for calculating values or other things.
On 06/05/2019 11:57 PM, Samuel Sieb wrote:
On 6/5/19 10:15 PM, Joe Zeff wrote:
On 06/05/2019 08:45 PM, home user via users wrote:
(Joe Zeff said) > Try xournal.
Installed it. Tried it. Displays the document/form, but does not seem to provide functionality to fill it in
Try clicking on the T on the toolbar, to put it into Text mode.
Isn't that just writing text over top of the pdf content? It's not filling in the forms. Often the forms have some javascript code as well for calculating values or other things.
Yes, but most of the forms I've needed to fill out haven't needed anything but fill in the blank, so it's all I've needed.
(responding to Joe, Samuel, and Joe) Thank-you, Joe and Samuel.
Try clicking on the T on the toolbar, to put it into Text mode.
Isn't that just writing text over top of the pdf content? It's not filling in the forms. ....
Yes, but most of the forms I've needed to fill out haven't needed anything but fill in the blank, so it's all I've needed.
What Joe says works, but as Samuel says. This form has check boxes. So the clicking-the-T functionality is not adequate.
(Samuel said)
It's likely the new proprietary Adobe form. If that's the case, you can only use the Adobe app on Windows, or possibly Mac or Android.
Thank-you, Samuel.
Oh, one of thoose files.
It it available for windows-7? Is it free?
I used to have acroread? reader? on my windows box. But when they removed user control of patching and updating, I un-installed it. Does this new app allow me easy control over patching and updating?
If that new app passes all those tests, then what's it called?
On Wed, Jun 05, 2019 at 08:17:01PM -0600, home user via users wrote:
(Fred Smith said)
evince
Thank-you, Fred.
hmmmm....
-bash.3[~]: dnf install evince Last metadata expiration check: 0:52:01 ago on Wed 05 Jun 2019 07:15:38 PM MDT. Package evince-3.30.2-2.fc29.x86_64 is already installed. Dependencies resolved. Nothing to do. Complete!
-bash.4[~]:
So I already have it. When in Gnome, I look for evince, I get "Document Viewer". Document Viewer does not allow me to fill in the pdf form. The company representative that sent me the pdf file told me it is fill-in enabled.
from the evince help page:
Forms When filling out an interactive form, you can navigate from field to field by clicking on a field with your mouse. When you are finished filling out a text field, press Enter. You can make a selection in a scrollable list box by clicking on the list box and scrolling to your choice with your mouse. There may be some parts of a form that you may need to fill out by hand after you print the form. For example, you might have to circle certain things, or sign the form in one or more places. If you wish to do this electronically, you may want to try Xournal.
which, as someone else indicated that Adobe has changed forms so that the free tools may no longer work, still may not help.
Good luck!
On 6/6/19 8:14 AM, home user via users wrote:
(Samuel said)
It's likely the new proprietary Adobe form. If that's the case, you can only use the Adobe app on Windows, or possibly Mac or Android.
Thank-you, Samuel.
Oh, one of thoose files.
It it available for windows-7? Is it free?
I used to have acroread? reader? on my windows box. But when they removed user control of patching and updating, I un-installed it. Does this new app allow me easy control over patching and updating?
I think it's acrobat reader. It should work on Windows 7, but I don't really know anything about it since I don't use Windows. I just ran into this issue with some people I support. "Fortunately", a couple of them use Windows, so those are the people that get to fill in the forms when necessary.
On Wed, Jun 5, 2019 at 9:41 PM Samuel Sieb samuel@sieb.net wrote:
On 6/5/19 7:17 PM, home user via users wrote:
So I already have it. When in Gnome, I look for evince, I get "Document Viewer". Document Viewer does not allow me to fill in the pdf form. The company representative that sent me the pdf file told me it is fill-in enabled.
It's likely the new proprietary Adobe form. If that's the case, you can only use the Adobe app on Windows, or possibly Mac or Android.
Does anyone know if the latest Adobe Acrobat Reader will run on Wine?
On 6/6/19 11:12 AM, Chris Murphy wrote:
On Wed, Jun 5, 2019 at 9:41 PM Samuel Sieb samuel@sieb.net wrote:
On 6/5/19 7:17 PM, home user via users wrote:
So I already have it. When in Gnome, I look for evince, I get "Document Viewer". Document Viewer does not allow me to fill in the pdf form. The company representative that sent me the pdf file told me it is fill-in enabled.
It's likely the new proprietary Adobe form. If that's the case, you can only use the Adobe app on Windows, or possibly Mac or Android.
Does anyone know if the latest Adobe Acrobat Reader will run on Wine?
I was unsuccessful in getting it to work. It would start, but missing most icons in the interface and things just didn't work. If someone is able to get it to work, I would love to hear about it.
On Thu, 6 Jun 2019 11:26:26 -0700 Samuel Sieb samuel@sieb.net wrote:
On 6/6/19 11:12 AM, Chris Murphy wrote:
On Wed, Jun 5, 2019 at 9:41 PM Samuel Sieb samuel@sieb.net wrote:
On 6/5/19 7:17 PM, home user via users wrote:
So I already have it. When in Gnome, I look for evince, I get "Document Viewer". Document Viewer does not allow me to fill in the pdf form. The company representative that sent me the pdf file told me it is fill-in enabled.
It's likely the new proprietary Adobe form. If that's the case, you can only use the Adobe app on Windows, or possibly Mac or Android.
Does anyone know if the latest Adobe Acrobat Reader will run on Wine?
I was unsuccessful in getting it to work. It would start, but missing most icons in the interface and things just didn't work. If someone is able to get it to work, I would love to hear about it.
I don't have a sample .pdf to try but I always try to get around permissions issues by running as root, so sudo evince and see if that helps
d
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(responding to 4 posts) Thank-you, everyone, for trying to help.
(Samuel)
I think it's acrobat reader.
That was enough to look it up. It is available for windows-7 (but not Linux); it is free; but patching/updating is not user-controllable. I don't know if it allows the user to fill in dorms.
(Chris)
Does anyone know if the latest Adobe Acrobat Reader will run on Wine?
Red, white, or rose? Based on what Samuel said earlier in this thread, I wonder if it would work even on Everclear! (just kidding)
(Dave)
I don't have a sample .pdf to try but I always try to get around permissions issues by running as root, so sudo evince and see if that helps
This is not a question of file permissions (like those that can be changed by "chmod"). This is a different kind of permissions problem. To be sure, I checked the file's permissions, and I have both read and write permissions. I also tried your suggestion to run evince as root; I still could not fill in the form.
Next week, I will try to find the form in the company's web site; hopefully they provide a web page for filling it in. Otherwise, I'll have to print the form, fill it in by hand, and snail mailing it back to the company.
(responding to Fred) Thank-you, Fred.
I tried "man evince". I got nothing like what's in your post.
I could find nothing in the GUI for getting any kind of help.
I searched for a web site for evince, and found this one: "https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Evince". But this site had no user's guide, help, or anything else like what's in your post. The site's faq also did not help.
Where did you get what you posted, or how did you get it?
On Thu, Jun 06, 2019 at 07:45:32PM -0600, home user via users wrote:
(responding to Fred) Thank-you, Fred.
I tried "man evince". I got nothing like what's in your post.
I could find nothing in the GUI for getting any kind of help.
I searched for a web site for evince, and found this one: "https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Evince". But this site had no user's guide, help, or anything else like what's in your post. The site's faq also did not help.
Where did you get what you posted, or how did you get it?
Open your document, then in the toolbar (probably wrong name, its the bar at the top of the evince window) where the 3 window controls are at the right, all the way to the left is a red script "e". click on that, choose "help".
About halfway down, below "Interactive Forms", click on "forms" and voila!
Fred
Hi,
(f29) I need something, preferably from one of the usual repos (so I can easily install it with dnf), that I can use to fill in a pdf form. I can view the form just fine, but nothing seems to have functionality for me to fill it in. I did not see anything in "dnfdragora".
Having never dealt with any such forms, I had a quick look, and found this example, which suggests Open Office can create them:
http://foersom.com/net/HowTo/data/OoPdfFormExample.pdf
Saved it, loaded it in Atril document viewer (in Mate), filled in some details, then saved a copy of the document. I opened that copy, and it displays all the details that I typed in.
What I don't know about PDF forms is: Are they just intended to print out a page like you've filled it in, or are they supposed to be machine processable to extract your typed-in data? (Which seems a very dumb requirement in this modern online world, with a couple of decades of HTML forms already fulfilling that purpose.)
And if the latter is true (of a program being able to parse out your PDF form data), does what I tried work fully?
On Thu, 6 Jun 2019 19:39:46 -0600 home user via users users@lists.fedoraproject.org wrote:
Next week, I will try to find the form in the company's web site; hopefully they provide a web page for filling it in. Otherwise, I'll have to print the form, fill it in by hand, and snail mailing it back to the company.
also after digging into the evince forms help I found a reference to Xournal that you might look into, here:
http://www.g-loaded.eu/2008/05/03/how-to-annotate-pdf-files-in-linux-using-x...
Dave
On Wed, 5 Jun 2019 19:54:39 -0600 home user via users users@lists.fedoraproject.org wrote:
(f29) I need something, preferably from one of the usual repos (so I can easily install it with dnf), that I can use to fill in a pdf form. I can view the form just fine, but nothing seems to have functionality for me to fill it in. I did not see anything in "dnfdragora". _______________________________________________
In the past, when all else has failed, I've been able to import a pdf file into GIMP. Then create a text box at each place in the form needing to be filled in - even check boxes - then print the form, choosing pdf file as the format instead of paper. GIMP is a very powerful (read steep learning curve) program that I use very infrequently, so it is a bit time consuming to get each check box in the right place with the right size font but by careful saving in gimps format after each change it has worked.
A lot of work but when nothing else is available, it has done the job.
On Fri, Jun 7, 2019 at 12:24 AM Tim via users users@lists.fedoraproject.org wrote:
What I don't know about PDF forms is: Are they just intended to print out a page like you've filled it in, or are they supposed to be machine processable to extract your typed-in data? (Which seems a very dumb requirement in this modern online world, with a couple of decades of HTML forms already fulfilling that purpose.)
Yes, both, and more.
PDF has many different versions and options and at least two different systems for defining forms and the data to fill them. I have a commercial application that uses one of the older formats, but generates tens of thousands of "official" documents with data filled in from a database and an official ink signature (as a graphic) which recipients can use as evidence to perform their businesses.
With the proper libraries, these documents can be queried and what the form-filler placed in the named data entry fields (text, number, checkboxes, etc.) can be read by machine. So, the PDFs can be computer- or user-generated and could be computer- and user-readable.
There are also complex forms (like tax documents) which can be filled out with a viewer or some browsers and submitted, either as a document, or by using embedded script, submitted over the internet. There are some benefits over HTML forms in being able to print pixel-perfect forms or save PDFs for those who need to archive their documentation. HTML printing on the spectrum of operating systems and variety of printers is more difficult to achieve.
There are a number of closed source, proprietary, commercial PDF libraries to accomplish all of these functions. Open source options are more limited. I've had great success with pdftk, which is available on Ubuntu but not Fedora due to iText licensing issues, iirc.
(Fred said)
Open your document, then in the toolbar (probably wrong name, its the bar at the top of the evince window) where the 3 window controls are at the right, all the way to the left is a red script "e". click on that, choose "help".
I ran "bash.5[~]: evince Downloads/AAF-0107AO.pdf" form the command line. I don't have an 'e' anywhere in that top bar. See the attached screen-capture.
On Fri, 7 Jun 2019 13:02:34 -0600 home user via users users@lists.fedoraproject.org wrote:
(Fred said)
Open your document, then in the toolbar (probably wrong name, its the bar at the top of the evince window) where the 3 window controls are at the right, all the way to the left is a red script "e". click on that, choose "help".
I ran "bash.5[~]: evince Downloads/AAF-0107AO.pdf" form the command line. I don't have an 'e' anywhere in that top bar. See the attached screen-capture.
for me I start evince then pull down the help menu and then click on help then scroll down to interactive forms and click on "forms"
Dave
On Fri, Jun 07, 2019 at 01:02:34PM -0600, home user via users wrote:
(Fred said)
Open your document, then in the toolbar (probably wrong name, its the bar at the top of the evince window) where the 3 window controls are at the right, all the way to the left is a red script "e". click on that, choose "help".
I ran "bash.5[~]: evince Downloads/AAF-0107AO.pdf" form the command line. I don't have an 'e' anywhere in that top bar. See the attached screen-capture.
Hmm. I see. Try that left-most item in the top bar and see if it gives you a menu that includes "Help". screenshot attached.
On 6/7/19 12:02 PM, home user via users wrote:
(Fred said)
Open your document, then in the toolbar (probably wrong name, its the bar at the top of the evince window) where the 3 window controls are at the right, all the way to the left is a red script "e". click on that, choose "help".
I ran "bash.5[~]: evince Downloads/AAF-0107AO.pdf" form the command line. I don't have an 'e' anywhere in that top bar. See the attached screen-capture.
Look higher. It's in the menu on the Gnome panel at the top of the screen.
(Dave said)
for me I start evince then pull down the help menu and then click on help then scroll down to interactive forms and click on "forms"
(Fred said)
Hmm. I see. Try that left-most item in the top bar and see if it gives you a menu that includes "Help". screenshot attached.
(Samuel said)
Look higher. It's in the menu on the Gnome panel at the top of the screen.
Samuel gets the cigar!
Evince just won't let me edit this form. I think Samuel's June 05 post is correct:
It's likely the new proprietary Adobe form.
Nothing except Adobe's newer reader will support filling this form in. An that new reader is not available for Linux.
I've marked this thread "CLOSED". I thank everyone for their efforts.
Did you try "Atril"? It worked with the example form I found.
2019-06-07 6:02 GMT+02:00, Tim via users users@lists.fedoraproject.org:
Having never dealt with any such forms, I had a quick look, and found this example, which suggests Open Office can create them:
http://foersom.com/net/HowTo/data/OoPdfFormExample.pdf
Saved it, loaded it in Atril document viewer (in Mate), filled in some details, then saved a copy of the document. I opened that copy, and it displays all the details that I typed in.
Works with evince and qpdfview also.
-
Andras Simon -
Chris Murphy -
Dave Stevens -
Fred Erickson -
Fred Smith -
home user -
Joe Zeff -
Samuel Sieb -
Ted Roche -
Tim