PDFArranger Invalid Form Fields in Concatenated Tax Forms

[Randall Whitman]

With Evince-3.36.10-0ubuntu1, fill in US-IRS PDF Y2020 tax forms (f1040, f1040s1, f1040s2) and save.

With PDF-Arranger 1.4.2-1:
[+] t2210-f1040.pdf
[+] t2210-1040s1.pdf
[+] t2210-1040s2.pdf
Export (down-arrow icon) t2210-tax-cat2.pdf - popped up warnings in dialog box:

The metadata field /Accessibility with value 'structured; tagged' has no XMP equivalent, so it was discarded
The metadata field /Form with value 'fillable' has no XMP equivalent, so it was discarded

The produced PDF file is invalid [1][2]. Although a warning is shown, the message in no way makes it clear to the user that some viewers will show invalid amounts in blank fields in a tax form!

Display of t2210-tax-cat2.pdf page 3 (f1040 s1):

* chromium-browser-106.0.5249.91 (and presumably G-Chrome & MS-edge): incorrectly displays form entry in lines 2b, 5, 7, 8-lhs, 11, 13, 16, 21.
* Adobe Acrobat Reader: reportedly [2] all blank.
* evince-3.36.10-0ubuntu1, xpdf-3.04-7 (libpoppler): correct (lines 1, 3, 9, 14 only)
* firefox-104: correct (lines 1, 3, 9, 14 only)

Display of t2210-tax-cat2.pdf page 4 (f1040 s2):

* chromium-browser-106.0.5249.91: incorrectly displays form entry in lines 1, 3, 6, 7b, 8, 8c
* evince-3.36.10-0ubuntu1, xpdf-3.04-7 (libpoppler): correctly blank except lines 4 & 10.
* firefox-104: correctly blank except lines 4 & 10.

PDFArranger 1.8.2 is reported [1] to not repro the issue, but Ubuntu-20.04-LTS has the 1.4 version.

Tested on Ubuntu-20.04.5/Linux-5.4.0/amd64.

[1] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chromium-browser/+bug/1993021/comments/3
[2] https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1376014#c5

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 20.04
Package: pdfarranger 1.4.2-1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.4.0-125.141-generic 5.4.195
Uname: Linux 5.4.0-125-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu27.24
Architecture: amd64
CasperMD5CheckResult: skip
CurrentDesktop: Unity:Unity7:ubuntu
Date: Sat Oct 22 20:12:35 2022
EcryptfsInUse: Yes
InstallationDate: Installed on 2018-11-21 (1431 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS "Bionic Beaver" - Release amd64 (20180725)
PackageArchitecture: all
SourcePackage: pdfarranger
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to focal on 2022-07-09 (105 days ago)