Hi Rikard and all, Since Maëlle left, I will be more involved in (indeed, in charge of) the pdfreaders campaign.
On 23/01/2011 22:48, Rikard Fröberg wrote:
Yes, we need to explain to them (I only mailed with one individual there, so I'm not sure how the rest of the Police understands this matter) the difference between using "PDF" and "PDF that requires exclusively AA Reader" for file formats.
Good way to go.
*we should not say* :
- The way they create their form is wrong -> they would probably react
not be very listening if we start telling them they are wrong, we should rather tell them they can be better.
We could start by complementing them on the choice of PDF before other formats around. Then inform them that PDFs can be different depending on what you use to create them with. Additionally we could say that we assume that their aim is to be open and accessible and that they can be even more so, should they create PDFs in a way that makes them more universally editable.
Completely agree.
*What we need to search in preparation*:
- Free Software PDF readers are not very performant with forms. They can
usually open them, but not save the information entered, and not perform a check-up routine. We need to determine which software are good at *editing* PDFs that can be open by all readers. It would be better here to have Free Software to suggest, in case they aren't, I guess it would already be an improvement to have institutions publish forms that can be open by Free Software even if they are created by a proprietary one...
- Rikard suggested there were possibilities to create forms with Open
Office or libre Office. Nico here tested Open Office, it worked for what concerns the form functions, but we couldn't figure out how to design the layout we wanted for the PDF... Some research here would be good before recommending these options
- other options would be good.
Stian perhaps has some input here?
*ping*
- @Rikard : there is the possibility to create a wiki page on FSFE's
wiki (wiki.fsfe.org). If you don't have an account there, either one of the Fellows in Sweden could help you create the list of institutions, or you can create a guest account [2].
I'll check that out, thanks! If anyone beats me to it, in creating a sub page for this subset of the bugs involving PDF use, please let me know the URL to it!
Have you got to have an account in the meantime? I would not like to miss your input on the subject, since you've demonstrated to have a broad knowledge and deep involvment with the pdf forms matter. I believe that this page can become very good if you still would like to take care of writing it (you can send me plain-text information too and I'll format/upload them, let's not be stopped by technical futilities).
*Do you have other ideas, comments on how we can procede here*?
I think putting together a guide on how to provide Forms that can be edited by other software than AAR is a great step.
Maybe the same wikipage can become such a guide
Is using editable documents really a good idea for forms at all, btw? Woudn't it be better to have forms as part of their website? Then they could focus on following web standards in order to make the site as a whole accessible... Maybe I'm old-fashioned but I kind of like to print out forms and fill them in using a pen ;-) And I'm cynical enough to advice against interactive forms (having fields and tab order and input validation) as a file format for *text* since I'm convinced it will create interoperability and compatibility problems when accessed using different "readers" or even different versions of the same reader.
I'm not sure it is time-worthy to enter in such a discussion with institutions. In my opinion they'll just stuck with their current process if we don't bring them an easy means to do it better. But I agree with you that pdf forms is a loose form of process automation… Web forms would work far better.
By the way, I propose we don't talk about "editing" but about "filling", since we don't edit the structure or texts inside the pdf, just fill in the blanks (or do I miss something here?).
But I'm not sure at all that this is relevant here. I just wanted to share my thoughts, because actually I reacted to the fact that you could download a "form" meant to be filled in using a computer. It may have security implications as well as the compatibility issues, I thought.
What do you all think about this? Should forms be part of a portable document format? If so, why and how should this be implemented?
I don't think so; however, as said above, the security implications or compatibility problems are not strong enough (they will believe) to have institutions change to more complex web-based forms. So I propose we stick with helping them improve their pdf forms.
This morning I generated a pdf form using open office writer, open it with evince, filled the form, ticked a tickbox, saved the whole, reopened it with evince: everything looks good at all steps of the process. The layout problems Maëlle mentioned previously are gone. I'm attaching the documents.