Bug 481160

Summary: Better usability when using annotations to fill out a PDF document that was created without fillable forms
Product: [Applications] okular Reporter: Philippe ROUBACH <philippe.roubach>
Component: generalAssignee: Okular developers <okular-devel>
Status: REPORTED ---    
Severity: wishlist CC: aacid, nate
Priority: NOR Keywords: usability
Version First Reported In: unspecified   
Target Milestone: ---   
Platform: Other   
OS: Linux   
Latest Commit: Version Fixed/Implemented In:
Sentry Crash Report:
Attachments: bad alignment
big document

Description Philippe ROUBACH 2024-02-10 10:30:40 UTC
SUMMARY

It would be very handy if Okular can fill any check and text field in a document without any form, as Adobe Fill & sign Android app.

Thanks
Comment 1 Albert Astals Cid 2024-02-10 10:44:54 UTC
You can already write text as an annotation, so what more do you need?
Comment 2 Philippe ROUBACH 2024-02-10 11:32:47 UTC
Created attachment 165723 [details]
bad alignment

Example of bad alignment
Comment 3 Philippe ROUBACH 2024-02-10 11:33:55 UTC
I recommend you to test Adobe fill and sign.
You will experiment that it is very easy to fill and check the different fields. It is as easy as for a document with a form.
You have to just type in the text fields or click on a check field.

With Okular you must 
select "insert text"
put accurately the mouse cursor 
draw a zone
type the text
then OK

And :
- the result is not good. You get a bad alignment 
- it is slow
- it is tedious
- if you have 3–6 fields to fill, yes you can do it, but if you get a big document it is impossible.

see the attached document with bad alignment.
see the attached big document.
Comment 4 Philippe ROUBACH 2024-02-10 11:39:18 UTC
Created attachment 165724 [details]
big document

Example of a document with many fields, about 20-25, to fill.
Comment 5 Albert Astals Cid 2024-02-10 16:41:46 UTC
> I recommend you to test Adobe fill and sign.

I did, it doesn't allow me to fill the bank number on your first PDF in a way that displays nicely either.

I'll leave this open because it's a wish, and I also wish we had perfect heuristics that allowed us to detect when something is supposed to be fillable, but given humans sometimes even fail at that, we may never get it (and if we do it'll be a level of IA close to Terminator, so careful with what we wish :D)

FWIW the easier solution for this is go back to whoever gave you those PDF and ask them to create a better ones.
Comment 6 Philippe ROUBACH 2024-02-10 16:48:09 UTC
>> FWIW the easier solution for this is go back to whoever gave you those PDF and ask them to create a better ones.

I did that many times. I helped them by supplying some kind of how-to, saying to use LibreOffice to create pdf with form ... without any success.
Comment 7 Nate Graham 2024-02-14 22:07:06 UTC
The bad alignment is something that is probably fixable though. I'd request that you submit a new bug report for that.