[XeTeX] XeTeX and PDF Forms

[Jonathan Kew]

On 5 Feb 2008, at 5:06 pm, Bruno Voisin wrote:

> Le 5 févr. 08 à 17:51, mike leonard a écrit :
>
>> I hope it's not poor etiquette to respond to my own post. I'm  
>> guessing
>> that the lack of responses indicates that there's really no way to  
>> use
>> XeTeX for creating fill-in forms. Can anyone confirm or deny this? Is
>> this something that could be accomplished using PDF \specials  
>> somehow?
>> I know that other features of hyperref do work with XeTeX and I'm
>> really hoping to find a solution for creating PDF forms.
>
> There have been threads on fill-in PDF forms either here or on the OS
> X TeX list. I'm not quite sure I'm remembering the outcome correctly,
> but if memory serves right the sad conclusion was that, in order to
> allow forms to be filled in using free applications (like Adobe
> Reader, xpdf or, on OS X, Preview), you needed to use the commercial
> Adobe Acrobat. Again, I may be mixing things up, but I'm not: there is
> somewhere a bit to activate in the PDF file, authorizing Adobe Reader
> to edit the forms, and only Acrobat (the commercial stuff) can
> activate this bit.

I think that's something different: that discussion was about the  
ability to "comment" a PDF using Adobe Reader.

Fill-in forms are a separate aspect of the PDF spec, and don't  
require a commercial Adobe product to create them, AFAIK.

JK