[GTALUG] Adobe Reader Alternatives for Linux

[Stewart C. Russell]

Hi Dhaval
> 
> However the government of Canada (in its infinite wisdom) has mandated
> that to open and fill their forms, one use Adobe Reader. (As an
> example see http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/pdf/kits/citizen/CIT0002E-2.pdf
> ).

Ah, you've just met XFA¹, Adobe's incompatible-with-itself forms
standard. These files are produced by Adobe LiveCycle (aka DeathSpiral),
a produce Adobe bought in some years ago and can't seem to integrate
with its main code base.

You can't even edit these forms in the very expensive Adobe Acrobat Pro.
They come pre-encrypted (but with a blank password) so no-one can break
DeathSpiral's mess further.

What's very annoying is that the form data is in there somewhere. It's
just that there's something (Javascript?) that only shows the first
page. The determined can poke around in the files with qpdf and pdftk,
but so far, no-one I know has worked their way around it.

> Alternatives?

This opens and edits them, but it's commercial if you want the full
version. This free one *might* watermark/distort your PDFs, but I
haven't seen evidence of this:

https://code-industry.net/free-pdf-editor

Link looks dodgy af, I know.

cheers,
 Stewart

¹: to be fair to Adobe, it *is* possible to create standards-compliant
XFA forms, just not in LiveCycle.