Unable to edit form created by pdflatex

[Russ Ross]

Upstream URL:
https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/evince/issues/536

Binary package hint: evince

1) lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu Vivid Vervet (development branch)
Release: 15.04

2) apt-cache policy evince
evince:
  Installed: 3.14.1-0ubuntu1
  Candidate: 3.14.1-0ubuntu1
  Version table:
 *** 3.14.1-0ubuntu1 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ vivid/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

3) What is expected to happen is when one opens the following PDF created using pdftex/pdflatex, the form may be edited, just like in Adobe Reader:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/evince/+bug/159032/+attachment/167511/+files/simpleform.pdf

4) What happens instead is it is not editable.

WORKAROUND: Open it in Chrome's built-in PDF reader.

apt-cache policy google-chrome-stable:i386
google-chrome-stable:i386:
  Installed: 39.0.2171.95-1
  Candidate: 39.0.2171.95-1
  Version table:
 *** 39.0.2171.95-1 0
        500 http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb/ stable/main i386 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

thanks for your report.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

The example is not rendered correctly on hardy, there is no entry displayed there

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

I've tested the pdf with acroread and it doesn't work there either, i'm afraid your pdf is broken, closing this report.

[Russ Ross (russ-russross)]

I just tested it with acroread 7 on Ubuntu Gutsy and it works just
fine for me. I use these forms all the time with Windows and Linux
and they always work with Acroread and the professional version of
Acrobat, but never with evince.

The form is deliberately simple--there is an input box with a red
outline surrounded by parentheses. Perhaps you were expecting more?
I've attached a screenshot of acroread and evince side-by-side on
Gutsy so you can see the difference.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

I've tested it with hardy and with acroread there, there's no red box around there nor anything, same happens with xpdf.

[Adam Buchbinder (adam-buchbinder)]

I can reproduce this problem. The field does not appear in Evince, but does appear in Acroread 8.1.3. However, when I try to save it, Acroread shows a warning dialog reading "This document does not allow you to save any changes you have made to it unless you are using Adobe Acrobat 8.0 Standard or Adobe Acrobat 8.0 Professional. You will only be saving a copy of the original document. Do you want to continue?". This seems to imply that there's some kind of permission problem, maybe?

Reproduced with evince 2.24.1-0ubuntu1 and libpoppler3 0.8.7-1 on Ubuntu Intrepid.

[Adam Buchbinder (adam-buchbinder)]

On the other hand, according to pfdtk, the PDF does not contain a form field; I'm attaching the output of:

$ pdftk simpleform.pdf generate_fdf output simpleform.fdf

However, Acroread does understand the fields embedded (somehow?) in the PDF, so there's still definitely a bug here. There just might also be a bug in the package that generated it as well.

[Dimitrios Symeonidis (azimout)]

In fact, I too can verify that this works with adobe reader 8.1.3 in ibex.

Pedro, you need to install acroread-plugins for forms!!!!

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

the bug is an upstream one and should be sent to bugzilla.gnome.org

[Adam Buchbinder (adam-buchbinder)]

Filed upstream.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

thank you for sending the bug to GNOME

[frotz (frotz)]

I think it might be time to retire this bug. Forms can be filled now.

[Russ Ross (russ-russross)]

I just tried it with the sample file on Ubuntu 9.10 and it still doesn't work.

- Russ

On Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 11:17 AM, frotz <email address hidden> wrote:
> I think it might be time to retire this bug.  Forms can be filled now.
>
> --
> form support does not work with forms created by pdflatex
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/159032
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>