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Implementing form filling and accessibility in the Firefox PDF viewer

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21–30 of 79 posts

Re: Implementing form filling and accessibility in the Firefox PDF viewer

#21

To this day, I do not understand why it is practically impossible to simply rotate a PDF and save it in its rotated form without downloading some additional PDF application. Edit: On Windows. I envy Preview in MacOS

Might want to specify the platform. on macOS that's like 2 clicks in Preview.app.

It’s a single key shortcut. The document is then auto saved.

Preview.app is king.

Re: Implementing form filling and accessibility in the Firefox PDF viewer

#23

To this day, I do not understand why it is practically impossible to simply rotate a PDF and save it in its rotated form without downloading some additional PDF application. Edit: On Windows. I envy Preview in MacOS

Might want to specify the platform. on macOS that's like 2 clicks in Preview.app.

Is it actually rotated or does it just remember that that document is supposed to be rotated? In other words if you emailed it to me would it still be rotated when I opened it?

Re: Implementing form filling and accessibility in the Firefox PDF viewer

#24
post #15

Remember when Mozilla management promised that they were going to kill pdf.js (why?) and replace it with the chrome pdf viewer, then wasted a few years not pulling it off? Good times.

I'll copy out this comment of mine in response to an analogous question:

> Mozilla developers at the time actually have other plans with the Pepper plugin support: Adobe Flash (since that Chrome's Pepper Plugin API (PPAPI) is actually miles better and secure than the Netscape [-era - ed.] Plugin API or NPAPI). They abandoned Mortar (the name of the project) when Adobe have announced that it will retire Flash.

Re: Implementing form filling and accessibility in the Firefox PDF viewer

#25

Why is it that, a ~decade since MacOS started including forms and markups in their default PDF app (Preview) there still isn't a sane PDF editor for Windows? Chrome and Firefox's PDF viewers don't have editing, Edge has editing and forms but bonkers window management (sometimes PDFs open with Edge but not in an Edge window). Adobe Reader DC still tries to ship with malware, and is license-restricted. What gives?

I use PDF XChange Editor, and convinced my company it was worth it to pay for it (which it is). Aside from editing capabilities and everything else you'd want, it opens and searches large files far quicker than anything else I tried.

On mobile, I use MuPDF but its limited on features and I use because it's quick.

Re: Implementing form filling and accessibility in the Firefox PDF viewer

#26

I wonder when Mozilla is going to start to include ads in their pdf renderer. I mean it wouldn't really be "ads", more like suggested extra pages provided by trusted partners...

They could really add value by using AI to detect certain PDF forms. If the form you're filling appears to be a tax return, then a Helpful Message from a Trusted Partner would appear ("TurboTax users average $300 larger refunds").

Residential mortgage application? "Shop Rates and Save"

Re: Implementing form filling and accessibility in the Firefox PDF viewer

#27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Might want to specify the platform. on macOS that's like 2 clicks in Preview.app.

Is it actually rotated or does it just remember that that document is supposed to be rotated? In other words if you emailed it to me would it still be rotated when I opened it?

Actual PDF rotate.

In other news, that's precisely why I'm weary to open PDFs in (edit: recent versions of) macOS because it autosaves, and I need to have a bit-perfect copy of said PDF. I mean, I open it in Firefox or Chrome, and this is just a problem that is specific to my circumstance, but it still bugs me.

Re: Implementing form filling and accessibility in the Firefox PDF viewer

#28
post #9

Why is it that, a ~decade since MacOS started including forms and markups in their default PDF app (Preview) there still isn't a sane PDF editor for Windows? Chrome and Firefox's PDF viewers don't have editing, Edge has editing and forms but bonkers window management (sometimes PDFs open with Edge but not in an Edge window). Adobe Reader DC still tries to ship with malware, and is license-restricted. What gives?

Apple did it because they were the underdog 15-20 years ago. Microsoft doesn't give a shit. There's no realistic market opportunity for a small third party to get a sizeable amount of revenue either, with Adobe looming. I kinda miss the early 90s when we actually had competing software "houses" with some financial muscle.

preview.app has been around since NextSTEP, which used display postscript for its windowing engine. Having a first-class pdf reader falls out pretty naturally.

Re: Implementing form filling and accessibility in the Firefox PDF viewer

#29
PDFJS is fantastic.

But PDFJS folks, how can you do such a subpar job at documentation?

There is really no documentation available on pdfjs. Or a proper changelog. Like in this article they talk about JS execution in pdfjs. And how they have a solution called quickjs. _no_ documentation whatsoever about how to use it.

This has been their documentation for years:

https://mozilla.github.io/pdf.js/api/

Had I created something as complex and magnificent as pdfjs I would've documented _the hell_ out of it.

I get that pdfjs usage in normal web is not their priority and what they care about is the Firefox pdf viewer but I'm sure they would've had a much better contribution rate had they done better api docs.

Re: Implementing form filling and accessibility in the Firefox PDF viewer

#30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be possible to implement telemetry that would answer these questions in mostly unobjectionable fashion, but without more information one can see how this could be described as "scary". I certainly hope that forms aren't just being sent back home to Mozilla as-is. However, a monthly ping with statistics like "out of between 50 and 200 documents, between 10 and 50 of them used javascript" wouldn't harm anythin…

I often do not have a problem with the information telemetry collects: I take issue with the entitlement to it a new breed of awful app developers have. They think they have the right to use my device for information collection without my permission. If Firefox occasionally showed me a report on some metrics it collected and asked me if I was okay sending it to Mozilla, I'd probably be fine with it. However, the choi…

Do they do that? It's been a long time since I installed Firefox, but as far as I can tell there are very visible settings for controlling the telemetry that they collect.
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