Dear Charles,

* Charles BRISSET charles.brisset@etu.univ-poitiers.fr [2012-11-03 11:10:31 +0100]:

I will not support this campaign.

Why ? Because a lot of PDF readers could not read PDF 1.7 or it's a strong recommendation in french's administrations in the RGI (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/RGI page 62 to 64).

It is difficult to implement a standard completely, if you have no saying in developing the standard. Beside some documents out there are not PDF 1.7 compliant. Adobe has better failure handling than the Free PDF readers. If all public administrations just highlight Adobe, other companies will have no chance to compete.

I hate to download a PDF (like this one: https://www.formulaires.modernisation.gouv.fr/gf/cerfa_13788.do), open with Evince and read inside that i only read this with Acrobade Reader.

The problem in a lot of cases like that we saw is not that the Free reader is not able to display it. It is more like those stupid browser detections which afterwards tell you, that your Browser is not =IE6.0 and therefor you cannot display the website.

And a lot of bugs in Evince should say "this software don't support PDF 1.7, form, : https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/evince https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=665581 https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=338721 https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=667622

From a technical point I think PDF forms are a very bad practice. I hope

that government will get rid of them. People send around their data, unencrpyted over the internet. They should have a form on their website over HTTPS, they can fill it out, and if necessary the user can afterwards print a file, or the data goes directly to the public administration.

If, in PDF 1.7, there are some software patent, i think that FSF should communicate on that point. If it's not, FSF should help to develop better compatibility with Evince and Sumatra PDF ( one of the better PDF reader in Windows and in French, not like Evince).

With this campaign we raise awereness on this issue. We try to motivate people to contribute to PDFreader development and translations of the programms. If nobody uses another program, it is not motivating to develop them. And if the public administrations makes advertisement for non-free readers, it is even more difficult to get more users/developers.

I hope that helps you to understand our motives better.

Best Regards, Matthias