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Embedded PDF viewer in Firefox 81 supports filling forms

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Re: Embedded PDF viewer in Firefox 81 supports filling forms

#71

Post by amelius »

mettamage wrote: post #68
kebman wrote: post #15

I looked into coding PDFs once. Then I closed my MacBook (Pro) and went for a long walk into the ocean. I think I almost got to America, but then I turned and swam back again. Turnd out I had just fallen asleep and had a nightmare. I was actually just working with regular text files, and everything was fine.

What's your favorite PDF feature that causes a brain meltdown? I've read a few comments on HN how PDF is, well, not developer-friendly. If people are interested in providing some more examples here, I'd be curious to know!

At least it's probably better than MS-Word's internal format ... (?)

Re: Embedded PDF viewer in Firefox 81 supports filling forms

#72

Post by ManBlanket »

voldacar wrote: post #9

Truly revolutionary tech

And here I was thinking we were living in the future when I could print out a pdf, fill out the fields with a pencil, take a picture of it, then email it to myself, change the file type back to pdf, and send it to whomever requested it...

Re: Embedded PDF viewer in Firefox 81 supports filling forms

#73

Post by marvindanig »

tdhz77 wrote: post #66
inetknght wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It has plenty of advantages over HTML but they're easy to dismiss if you don't have a use case for them. Can you discuss some of the advantages? The only advantage that comes to mind is that Apple has built-in support for writing PDFs and that has a lot to do with Adobe rather than PDF being a better candidate.

I work for US Federal courts, I can assure you html isn’t sufficient over PDF’s for court cases. Evidence are filed in pdfs. Documents (PDFs) need to be a historical archive, and the ability to modify would damage the credibility of those documents.

Yeah, but does Firefox need to solve the use-case of a court system? Also, tangentially the solution to guarantee "tamperproof" archiving is in cryptography and that's not a feature of PDF.

Re: Embedded PDF viewer in Firefox 81 supports filling forms

#74

Post by willis77 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #64
rvense wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favourite PDF fact is that it doesn't have to start at the beginning or end at the end of a file. Any sea of bytes that contains a PDF file is an acceptable PDF file...

Did anyone try to pluck out PDFs from /dev/urandom? How about from radiotelescope feed? Maybe the first evidence of extraterrestrial life will be some poor alien's tax form?

The digits of pi contain every pdf that ever could and ever will exist.

Re: Embedded PDF viewer in Firefox 81 supports filling forms

#75

Post by sp332 »

rvense wrote: post #45
kebman wrote: post #15

I looked into coding PDFs once. Then I closed my MacBook (Pro) and went for a long walk into the ocean. I think I almost got to America, but then I turned and swam back again. Turnd out I had just fallen asleep and had a nightmare. I was actually just working with regular text files, and everything was fine.

My favourite PDF fact is that it doesn't have to start at the beginning or end at the end of a file. Any sea of bytes that contains a PDF file is an acceptable PDF file...

On the other hand, this allows for some incredible polyglot files, like some of the tricks with PoC||GtfO issues where the file is a readable PDF but also a game cartridge and also a zip file with the proof-of-concept code in the issue. And the front cover has the MD5 hash of the whole file printed on it... but that's another trick entirely!

Re: Embedded PDF viewer in Firefox 81 supports filling forms

#77

Post by yzmtf2008 »

marvindanig wrote: post #54
f1refly wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Distributing a document with functioning kerning and embedded fonts that works offline

Serviceworkers+@font-faces+font-kerning property of CSS3. Done, next.

I think you missed the point of distributing. I’m never going to let you email me your serviceworkers because I can’t forward this document to anyone without relying on you hosting a server / not changing the content.

Re: Embedded PDF viewer in Firefox 81 supports filling forms

#78

Post by blackbrokkoli »

I have a feeling this thread has a strong bias from highly automated valley life. In more provincial regions and even just much of Europe lots of forms have to be filled out and printed.

It is not something you have to everyday or something, but the existing solutions suck massively. You either have to use Adobe, which requires Windows (or Mac, I suppose) and your firstborn or use some massively shady online service. So personally, I love this feature!

(And I also do not think that this will halt all other development at Mozilla like some comments here imply)

Re: Embedded PDF viewer in Firefox 81 supports filling forms

#79

Post by sp332 »

elric wrote: post #34

That built in PDF viewer is another feature that could have been an addon. It's bloat which increases the browser's attack surface. It's completely unneeded given that just about every OS ships with some kind of PDF reader out of the box.

The alternative was installing an Adobe plugin with no sandbox, so it made sense at the time.
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