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Comment by tuzed | Hacker News Reader

That’s not entirely true. Some government forms where I live are shared in a PDF format but are only downloaded and displayed properly when they are opened in Acrobat, and otherwise display a page telling you to download acrobat. I suspect this allows the form to be updated, and see why it might be done, but I still find it very annoying.

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I've never seen this before, and I've been using the Preview method described above for 15+ years. I have also never installed an Adobe product on a mac, ever. Do you have a link to a file that can produce this error in Mac Preview? It would be fun to learn how to bypass that.

All / most PDF forms used by the Australian Defence Force are like this - I suspect it’s because it’s all tied into the identity / ability to digitally sign the forms.

It’s very frustrating when you send someone (externally) a PDF and it required them to install Acrobat.

Or maybe it’s just Adobe trying to take the P out of PDF…

The PDF format supports all sorts of insane extensions only implemented in Acrobat and only used by governments and large enterprises.

When I get forms like this I just dump them to jpg, fill them in an a paint program and zip them back up and send them as static images.

That doesn't work. You can't even view the PDF without Acrobat. (There's an example linked elsewhere in this thread.)

They may not be accepted by the form issuer if they have a process to pull the text out of specific fields in the PDF. I have run into that before. They are not just looking at the document but processing it.

Here's an example of a file that won't load properly in Preview and requires Acrobat: https://www.canada.ca/content/dam/ircc/migration/ircc/englis...

Thanks!

You can use Firefox to fill that in.

Which version? For me 90.0 shows the "Please wait" message which some JavaScript or something is supposed to replace, and 93.0 force downloads it, even when I try to open it from a local file.

As of Firefox 93.0

From the release notes: "Firefox PDF viewer now supports filling more forms (XFA-based forms, used by multiple governments and banks)."

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/view-pdf-files-firefox-...

It does get by the "Please wait..." that you get in Preview or Chrome but Firefox 93.0 doesn't actually load the form properly (e.g. it's 6 pages in Acrobat but only 3 pages in Firefox and those 3 pages aren't even rendered properly).

You might try filing you FBAR, which if you get wrong results in criminal penalties, and which (practically) every American living overseas needs to complete each year:

https://bsaefiling.fincen.treas.gov/NoRegFBARFiler.html

then press the 'prepare' button to trigger the download servelet to get the PDF.

Preview cannot even open the file, let alone allow you to digitally sign it in the manner approved by the Treas Dept.

My employer uses a training and document system (third party) that requires the use of Acrobat to view PDFs. I never have to fill out forms within the PDFs; I simply can't open the files via Preview (or Firefox). Apparently the provider inserts JavaScript into the published documents (which, I assume, track document usage, since it is a training system).

Also, I can't post a link to the document, since it contains proprietary training materials.

Yes, I've had to fill out similar forms for submitting a manuscript to Nature Publishing Group journals. It seemed to me like the entire PDF was being dynamically generated via JS code or something. E.g. I would check a box for human subjects research and it would just add the relevant section to the form, re-adjusting the pagination on the fly.

Yes, the US polar programs physical qualification forms are like this, making me either use a VM or use my wife's laptop (since no supported acrobat for Linux).

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