On Sunday, May 11, 2014 09:17:40 PM C wrote:
On Sun, May 11, 2014 at 8:58 PM, Lew Wolfgang <wolfgang@sweet-haven.com> wrote:
Hi Folks,
I know this has been discussed in the past, but it's finally bitten me directly. While I applaud the decision to not include unsupported proprietary software in openSuSE, the problem remains. I've made several 13.1 installs so far, but I finally got around to installing on my personal machine. Alas, I need to fill out a government provided pdf with form fields and can't do it without acroread.
So, some questions:
1. Is there an open-source pdf package that supports forms? 2. Is there an open-source pdf package that allows digital signatures,
especially with keys from SmartCards?
I installed the latest unsupported acroread and appropriate 32-bit libraries and it seems to work. Does anyone have any ideas about how to mitigate the potential security threats? Maybe not access pdf's directly from the Internet or email, and run everything you do process through clamav first?
An alternative would be to use Win-XP Adobe Reader in Virtualbox, but I fail to see how that would be safer! No, I refuse to purchase a Win-7 or 8 license for Virtualbox.
Does anyone have any experience with Adobe Reader in Wine?
There are very few choices....
1. Install the Acrobat Reader 9 for Linux. 2. Install The latest Acrobat Reader in a Windows VM. 3. Try installing a 3rd party viewer in Wine (like Foxit for example). 4. Try to get the latest Acrobat Reader working in Wine./ 5. Try to use the native Linux readers. 6. If PDF in Linux is really important and the VM option is not possible and the Linux native readers don't cut it for what you need... buy a license to http://www.qoppa.com/pdfstudio/ (there's a demo version so you can test it to see if it can deal with forms)
I've tried all 6 options. Acroread 9 has security holes and update issues as you noted... 3rd party viewers rarely work with forms... I've never see Acroread work in Wine... native Linux PDF viewers rarely work with forms... PDF Studio is a hit/miss, and when I tested it, it failed on the PDF form I needed to fill in.
In the end my solution is Evince/Okular as the default. Where that fails, Acroread 9. Where that fails, I boot up a Windows VM and use the latest Acroread for WIndows... this last option always works.
C.
There are folks in the EU that use forms that are not handled by Ocular. I'm in the US, and I most often encounter PDFs with forms from the IRS and State Agencies that Ocular will handle. Every time I post this people tell me I'm crazy but it does work: 1) Open PDF Forms with Ocular 2) Notice warning that it does not handle forms 3) Ignore same 4) Click button that says Show forms 5) Fill in form 6) Unclick button that says Show Forms VERY IMPORTANT! 7) Notice that your input stays there 8) Save as <------- (some random name) 9) Close Ocular (this is just to test that this works) 10) Reopen the Original PDF 11) Notice all your changes are still in there 12) Open the Random named copy that you made above in step 8 13) Notice that your data is not saved. 14) Make mental note NEVER to report this as a bug Don't know why it won't work on Euro forms. --
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