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Show HN: Fill Paper and PDF Forms Online

form.ac

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Re: Show HN: Fill Paper and PDF Forms Online

#21

Post by telesilla »

samadmin wrote: post #13
telesilla wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. And I use HelloSign when I need someone else to sign it. The combo of both works perfectly for me. I cannot remember the last time I printed a PDF and scanned it back it.

Thanks for the feedback. Preview is a great option for mac users but I still find it awkward for text in boxes - account numbers, for example. I'm surprised Apple hasn't added a check mark annotate option. Not everyone knows the option-v trick.

I tried yours out and it's definitely superior - I'll be using this in the future for non-secure PDFs. If there is any way to do this offline I'd probably pay for an application bundle version.

Re: Show HN: Fill Paper and PDF Forms Online

#22

Post by ldenoue »

samadmin wrote: post #4
pkaye wrote: post #3

My main concern with this kind of service is that most of the times I fill out a form it has personal information which I don't want to risk leaking somewhere which is why I prefer local apps that don't transmit over the internet.

It's a valid concern which is why form.ac data is stored locally and is only transferred to generate the form and is then erased from the server. I think it should be possible to do it all client side with a modern browser but I haven't had a chance to do a proof of concept of that yet. It's also worth considering what you do after you've filled the form locally. Do you then email it somewhere? What does the receivin…

Do you think PDFjs could be extended to write new text inside the PDF, all client side? At the moment I’m only aware of PDFBox from Apache to do this, but that’s server side JAVA...

Re: Show HN: Fill Paper and PDF Forms Online

#23

Post by samadmin »

ldenoue wrote: post #22
samadmin wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a valid concern which is why form.ac data is stored locally and is only transferred to generate the form and is then erased from the server. I think it should be possible to do it all client side with a modern browser but I haven't had a chance to do a proof of concept of that yet. It's also worth considering what you do after you've filled the form locally. Do you then email it somewhere? What does the receivin…

Do you think PDFjs could be extended to write new text inside the PDF, all client side? At the moment I’m only aware of PDFBox from Apache to do this, but that’s server side JAVA...

Yes PDFjs is what we are looking at for a full client side version. However we've had issues with larger pdf's/images and localstorage limits.

Re: Show HN: Fill Paper and PDF Forms Online

#24

Post by samadmin »

telesilla wrote: post #21
samadmin wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the feedback. Preview is a great option for mac users but I still find it awkward for text in boxes - account numbers, for example. I'm surprised Apple hasn't added a check mark annotate option. Not everyone knows the option-v trick.

I tried yours out and it's definitely superior - I'll be using this in the future for non-secure PDFs. If there is any way to do this offline I'd probably pay for an application bundle version.

Thanks, glad to hear we've added something. I'm working on a full client-side version which will run completely offline (including generation). It will be a while away though. Send an email to support@form.ac if you'd like a notification if and when it's ready.

Re: Show HN: Fill Paper and PDF Forms Online

#25

Post by cpach »

samadmin wrote: post #18
cpach wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently had to edit a PDF on my work computer (which run Windows 10) and it was quite cumbersome to do compared to OS X. I finally managed to do it by installing Libreoffice Draw.

I trust form.ac would have been an easier option that that?

Definitely!
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