Is there a program that can fill, save and print PDF forms? In poking around Buster the default .pdf viewer seems to be gpdfview and it doesn't seem to work well with fillable forms (won't display correctly and can't make changes). Xpdf doesn't allow changes and does not seem to recognize changes made on a Mac using Preview. Chromium seems to recognize and display changes correctly but silently declines to save any change made. It does at least print correctly when a change is made and printed immediately. I thought LibreOffice might do the trick, but not in any intuitive way that I could easily find. Is there a better approach? Thanks for reading, bob prohaska

It's not particularly easy, but there is. pdftk is what you need, which in Debian and Raspbian is now available in pdftk-java. Short version, given A.pdf with the blank form in it: pdftk A.pdf dump_data_fields_utf8 >FD.fdf Edit FD.fdf with a text editor pdftk A.pdf fill_form FD.fdf output B.pdf and B.pdf will contain the filled form. Note that you may need several iterations as you work out what to put where in form_data.fdf. Longer instructions going into crunchy details:

Fillable/printable .pdf software for Pi?

M

Martin Gregorie 6 years ago

Apparently the US tax people are expecting people to do this.

The commonest one, xpdf, is explicitly a viewer only and qpdfview only allows rotation and scaling. According to Wikipedia the only programs that explicitly allow you to edit an existing PDF file and run under Linux are: LibreOffice Draw, OpenOffice Draw, PDFedit, Pdftk, PDF Studio and Karbon

Of this lot, I've only heard of the first two until now and others have said that Pdftk is just a set of command line tools, nor with a GUI front end and are a faff to use.

So what do you use to edit PDF files?

Bob Prohaska: were you just trying to use LibreOffice Writer or did you try LibreOffice Draw too?

Martin | martin at Gregorie | gregorie dot org

Vote

D

Daniel James 6 years ago

Editing a PDF file is not the same thing as filling in a fillable PDF form. If you want to change the form (change the layout or alter the text outside the fillable fields) than you need a PDF editor, but you can fill in a fillable form with a PDF viewer (provided it has that capability).

Cheers, Daniel.

Vote

D

Dennis Lee Bieber 6 years ago

On Wed, 11 Mar 2020 16:20:13 -0000 (UTC), Martin Gregorie declaimed the following:

Given that one started as a fork of the other...

Wulfraed Dennis Lee Bieber AF6VN wlfraed@ix.netcom.com http://wlfraed.microdiversity.freeddns.org/

Vote

S

Scott Alfter 6 years ago

The OP refers only to filling out forms, not editing them..."editing" would imply a bit more than merely filling out a form. If you're looking for something that will let you fill out a PDF form, Okular works well for that purpose. I've done my taxes with it (and a calculator) the past several years.

_/_ / v \ Scott Alfter (remove the obvious to send mail) (IIGS(

formatting link

Top-posting! \_^_/ >What's the most annoying thing on Usenet?

Vote

B

bob prohaska 6 years ago

Just tried it now. LibreOffice Draw opens the form with some minor layout errors (fonts overlapping) but can't display field entries already present and does not seem to recognize fillable fields. It does seem to recognize graphic features like lines in tables. It does not seem to detect or offer to alter text embedded in the form.

Thanks for replying!

bob prohaska

Vote

B

bob prohaska 6 years ago

I'd report a bug if I didn't have to create an account with credentials.

formatting link

is the test case. It won't be an issue until next year, and by then Adobe will probably have screwed things up in a new way.

Perhaps somebody with an account can toss another twig on the pyre.

It appears Chromium on the Pi can fill out the form quite successfully.

The idea is unappealing given Google's obsession with data mining.

Thanks to all for reading and replying!

bob prohaska

Vote

M

Martin Gregorie 6 years ago

Thanks for the update. Filed for future reference.

In case you need them, the PDF specification is here:

formatting link

and a GNU commentary which picks a simple example apart is here:

formatting link

Introduction_to_PDF

The example doc is here:

formatting link

db/Hello.pdf

Martin | martin at Gregorie | gregorie dot org

Vote

M

Martin Gregorie 6 years ago

Following up: I found an example PDF Form on the web, so checked out qpdfview and xpdf.

As I thought, Xpdf does not seem to have any form-filling capability.

However, qpdfview can accept input data provided that the PDF Form is first saved and its permissions changed to read+write. Don't forget to save it after entering your data (duh!)

Martin | martin at Gregorie | gregorie dot org

Vote

Fillable/printable .pdf software for Pi?

Join the Discussion

Didn't find your answer?