[gs-devel] PDF Formularies in Ghostscript

[Ray Johnston]

Dear Alberto,

Note the gs 8.57 was just released. Please see www.ghostscript.com
for the links to download sites.

Best Regards,
Ray
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Alberto Cuesta wrote:
> Dear Ray,
>
> thanks a lot for your reply, I can say that it is truly helpful. I'll 
> contact both your sales department and my manager to see if we should 
> negotiate something to code a prototype over Ghostscript. I hope we 
> will collaborate.
>
> Cheers,
> Alberto
>
> Ray Johnston escribió:
>> Dear Alberto,
>>
>> Ghostscript previously did not view any AcroForm data, but this is 
>> partly implemented,
>> disabled unless -dShowAcroForm=true is specified. Ghostscript 
>> currently does not
>> do anything with the 'interactive' elements of PDF such as JavaScript 
>> viewing mods,
>> but an application can send PostScript strings to access elements 
>> from the PDF
>> such as fetching the JavaScript in order to process within your 
>> application.
>>
>> For an example of PostScript that can dig information out of a PDF using
>> Ghostscript, please see toolbin/pdf_info.ps. You may also want to 
>> look at
>> the way Ghostscript gets the AcroForm dictionary in lib/pdf_main.ps and
>> how the data is processed in lib/pdf_draw.ps.
>>
>> Note that since the AcroForm code is quite new, you will want to get the
>> latest source from svn (using: svn co 
>> http://svn.ghostscript.com/trunk/gs )
>> or wait for 8.57 (which is coming out very soon).
>>
>> If you do decide to enhance Ghostscript to utilize the JavaScript 
>> code or
>> otherwise process and/or fill in the form data, we would be interested
>> in this for possible inclusion in the product since yours is not the 
>> first
>> time this has been requested.
>>
>> If Ghostscript continues to interest you and you encounter problems or
>> questions, please feel free to contact us. We cannot guarantee how
>> much help we can provide for other than commercial customers, but
>> since the project is interesting we will try to assist.
>>
>> Best Regards,
>> Ray Johnston
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> alcueca wrote:
>>> Hello all, excuses if this information can be found on the 
>>> documentation, the
>>> issue at hand is a bit complex and after some research is now when I 
>>> think I
>>> could use some expert advice.
>>>
>>> I have a client which desires to code an open-source PDF viewer 
>>> which would
>>> be able to display forms, allow the user to fill them, and run 
>>> JavaScript
>>> validation tests on the introduced information.
>>>
>>> My company is first researching the feasibility and costs of such a 
>>> project,
>>> and later we would be responsible for the development of the first
>>> prototype, the client would finish the development and carry the
>>> manteinance. We are looking for open-source pdf libraries and 
>>> viewers which
>>> we could use or extend for this task.
>>>
>>> As far as I know, there are only three open-source libraries, which 
>>> are the
>>> base for every open-source PDF viewer out there: Ghostscript, xpdf -
>>> poppler, and mupdf. I haven't seen any open-source pdf viewer which 
>>> supports
>>> forms.
>>>
>>> The questions are:
>>>
>>> Are formularies supported by the ghostscript library?
>>> are they expected to be supported in near future?
>>> maybe any other of the libraries could be used for this end?
>>> Is there any open-source pdf viewer which supports forms?
>>>
>>> Thanks a lot for your attention, cheers,
>>> Alberto
>>>
>>>
>>> P.S: Excuse me for reposts, I received notifications from nabbler 
>>> about the
>>> needing to subscribe and I'm not sure if the previous mail arrived.
>>>   
>>
>>
>
>