Ask HN: Can you open this PDF? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Can you open this PDF?

1 pointkspaans7 comments

http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/pdf/kits/forms/IMM1344E.pdf

From http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/information/applications/fc.asp

I figure they've just turned on the latest bells and whistles, but I haven't been able to open it on my Linux machines, nor find a friend with OS X or Windows and a version of Adobe Reader that can open it. Does anyone know how to figure out which feature of the PDF is causing the reader to display the error message rather than the content?

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I am using Chrome on Windows 7, version 44.0.2403.157 m and Chrome says it is up to date. When I open the PDF link I see in the browser "To view the full contents of this document, you need a later version of the PDF viewer. You can update to the latest version of Adobe Reader from blah blah blah..."

If I save it to my downloads folder and open it with Adobe Acrobat X it looks OK.

I'm not exactly sure where the plug-in viewer lives... I don't see it under Chrome extensions, or as a separate entity in Windows installed programs.

Ah... it looks like this is relevant: https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/142056?hl=en

If I disable the built-in PDF viewer when I open that link, Chrome downloads it rather than trying to display it. So it looks like Chrome's built-in PDF viewer can't handle the PDF.

I tried to follow the instructions to allow Acrobat to handle PDF documents in Chrome, but they did not work (it still downloads the file).

It has forms. The plugins choke on forms when the it is password protected from modification. Reader doesn't have that issue, only the plugins.

Good luck!

It opens in Adobe Acrobat reader on my Mac. My guess it's a fillable form which is preventing it from being displayed in other viewers.

I think the actual pdf says that.

I can see the table of contents, but I get a one page document with the message asking me to upgrade. But yeah, I'm sure it's some logic inside the document checking the version number of the reader or something, good point.

I'm no expert, but aren't there accessibility standards for government in place that this might violate?

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