https://travel.gc.ca/docs/child/consent-letter-2123.pdf Open the form and try it yourself. What you are saying doesn't work for this form. You need the scripts embedded in the form to create the final consent letter.
bazmatazable
joined 2 years ago
That just shows how dishonest Adobe is being. For example if a form was named "gov-form.xfa" instead of "gov-form.pdf" then my whole expectation would be different as it is obviously not a PDF and so I shouldn't treat it as such.
Where you able to convert the form into an open format and also preserve all the original functionality? If this is true then there is absolutely no excuse for these forms not being offered in alternative formats. There are some tools that will let you 'flatten' an XFA form to a static PDF but this destroys all the dynamic parts of the original.
Feels very hostile right? I assume that all these smart XFA forms still have an online legacy dumb equivalent that is far less easy to use (both for the user and the government)
Adobe does sell licences for other companies to use the XFA format but even the software you linked has a free reader that pushes you to the paid full version. Also not FOSS.
I'm glad that not everyone is oblivious to my suffering! Thanks for the validation!
Also to your point about not having an issue with Firefox, I read that Firefox recently implemented an XFA reader in their browser but the issue is that most of the javascript is not supported so the functionality of the form is not guaranteed to work.
https://travel.gc.ca/docs/child/consent-letter-2123.pdf I was exactly in your position before I had to use this document! I was confident that a government form would not be this complicated but a big part of my frustration was that I was trying to solve the issue as if it was a PDF problem but PDF is an open standard and there are plenty of excellent FOSS tools and programs that can do anything you can imagine with a PDF. This form is an imposter!
Very disappointed that the Canadian government uses them so much. I'm open to changing my mind if there is an explanation as to why this format is irreplaceable. Like maybe it offers some security feature or the like?
+1 for Kagi
Before you post a snappy "just do X" or "try this software" try it yourself consent-letter-2123.pdf my complaint is not trivial.