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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

#231

Post by tarikozket »

torresjrjr wrote: post #218
brendandahl wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PDF.js dev here. I'm a bit confused on which part of internal API you would like to use? The way I think of it, there are really three API's in pdf.js: 1) Main thread API (api.js) which we base the version off 2) The code that runs in the worker 3) The viewer components (web/*) Quite awhile ago when we decided what parts of the API to version, we thought more people would want to use #1. Now that the project is matur…

> PDF.js dev here I'm so sorry about being forward but why the hell don't the vim keys (hjkl) smooth scroll? Its so frustrating. Is there an option to set it as so? Using the arrow keys is so cumbersome.

here, I'll make it easier for you to contribute to the project by providing you with the lines you'd need to update:

https://github.com/mozilla/pdf.js/blob/83e1bbea6e23db8744420...

https://github.com/mozilla/pdf.js/blob/83e1bbea6e23db8744420...

Re: Embedded PDF viewer in Firefox 81 supports filling forms

#232

Post by Eduard »

kibwen wrote: post #124
_coveredInBees wrote: post #59

Sheesh, what's with the hate for a generally all-round useful feature in an Open source browser? The last thing I want is to have to install 3rd-party software on my machine and have my browser be held hostage to it just to view PDF documents on the web. Being able to fill them in is a very useful feature and the in-browser PDF readers are still way less bloated than most other plugins.

Yes, like it or not PDF is a de facto standard of the web, in the same way that Flash was nearly a de facto standard before the industry-wide decade-long effort to kill it. A browser that doesn't support PDFs is as lacking in the eyes of users as a browser that doesn't support PNGs.

I don't agree.

PDF is fine to be some binary blob to download just as most other binary blob formats are.

Would you expect to have .exe files being directly interpreted by a browser?

Re: Embedded PDF viewer in Firefox 81 supports filling forms

#233

Post by andrewzah »

eddiecalzone wrote: post #222
dehrmann wrote: post #114

PDF support in Firefox is one of the most important additions in recent years. My gripe with Mozilla was they're pursing all these side projects when they really should be targeting feature parity with Chrome. That's the only way people will ever switch.

I'm curious what you notice is missing in terms of feature parity. I'm mostly a back-end developer (not diving into devtools very often) and switched a year ago. I'm much happier and haven't looked back.

I just want support for APIs, mainly. I get websites from time to time that just refuse to load. E.g.

* blank pages when trying to load an imgur gallery on v68 (esr).

* image uploading not working right on instagram and various other sites, either producing blank images or ones with weird lines.

* several teleconferencing / video meeting websites just don't work properly, whether it's not detecting hardware properly, etc

I have to keep chromium installed so I can use these sites properly.

Re: Embedded PDF viewer in Firefox 81 supports filling forms

#234

Post by jiveturkey »

Eduard wrote: post #232
kibwen wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, like it or not PDF is a de facto standard of the web, in the same way that Flash was nearly a de facto standard before the industry-wide decade-long effort to kill it. A browser that doesn't support PDFs is as lacking in the eyes of users as a browser that doesn't support PNGs.

I don't agree. PDF is fine to be some binary blob to download just as most other binary blob formats are. Would you expect to have .exe files being directly interpreted by a browser?

> Would you expect to have .exe files being directly interpreted by a browser?

no, i wouldn't. and yet here we are: wasm.

Re: Embedded PDF viewer in Firefox 81 supports filling forms

#235

Post by agumonkey »

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...

I can never find the PDF hack talk where author explains all 100 ways to embed things in pdf or pdf into things

Re: Embedded PDF viewer in Firefox 81 supports filling forms

#236

Post by jiveturkey »

dgellow wrote: post #168

A note for Linux and macOS users, from someone who switched to windows one year ago: it’s maybe surprising but it is a VERY REAL pain in the Windows world to find a pdf reader that also allows you to edit forms, that doesn’t also come with malware or adware, and has even just a modest UX! So for sure you already have access to Evince and Preview.app, they already do everything you want, but Windows users don’t really…

eh? acroread is very easily found.

Re: Embedded PDF viewer in Firefox 81 supports filling forms

#237

Post by recursive »

phpdave11 wrote: post #205
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.

It's really not that difficult if you read and understand the PDF specification. As a learning exercise, I created a simple PDF generator library that creates ASCII PDF documents (you can open them in Notepad) and includes comments about what each drawing instruction does. https://github.com/phpdave11/davepdf

I'm sure generating PDFs is much easier than reading them, such that "it just works" with any kind of PDF.

Re: Embedded PDF viewer in Firefox 81 supports filling forms

#238

Post by patrec »

akie wrote: post #160
xaldir wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he was talking about the classic .doc format which was a clusterfuck and not the open XML.

If I remember correctly the XML format was just an XML-encoded version of the binary counterpart. Including all or most of the bugs and weird hacks.

You don't remember correctly. Word's docx format is far more intelligent than openoffice ODT, despite propaganda to the contrary. With one exception: word's zip files don't have a convenient magic header. The way it works with ODT, and a bunch of other formats is that you put an uncompressed identifier file (`mimetype`) as the first entry inside your zipfile. At byte 30 (of your zipfile) you then get `mimetype$THE_MIMEMETYPE`. This is a nice trick and works for any zip-based format. Sadly, docx does not do that so you have to go by file extension or look at (more of) the contents of the zipfile.

Re: Embedded PDF viewer in Firefox 81 supports filling forms

#239

Post by jrochkind1 »

boringg wrote: post #170

Can we just step away from PDFs to a better standard? Every time I deal with PDFs or I have to on behalf of my parents it is a true waste of time and resources - there has to be a better way.

Well, no, we can't just do that. But it's nice to dream.

Re: Embedded PDF viewer in Firefox 81 supports filling forms

#240

Post by marvindanig »

yzmtf2008 wrote: post #77
marvindanig wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Oh, I'm all in for email/attachment based distribution. Just not with Firefox sporting it on the web browser where you'd in all certainty require someone to host a server and for you to trust them that no changes have been made to the content.

That was the entire point of my comment at the top.

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