Hello,

I must disclaim that I've not used these packages yet and would welcome being 
informed if I'm mistaken.

It looks like both TeX Live and Debian have had reservations about shipping 
AcroTeX and eForms because at the time it was considered, the only PDF readers 
that appeared to support the features were proprietary ones. However, it seems 
that free PDF viewers have made great strides in the past several years 
especially in supporting these advanced features, so I think their inclusion in 
the standard distribution should be reconsidered.

Free PDF viewers, especially Okular with the Poppler backend, have gained 
support for many of the features that have been standardized, including non-XFA 
forms, digital/cryptographic signature support, and JavaScript, all things that 
eForms appears to assist in making. There are probably still some things that 
AcroTeX and eForms can do that only proprietary readers support, but unless 
software patents muddy the waters, it seems like this can improve in client 
software at any time.

Frankly I'm itching to use this functionality in my documents, but as a strong 
advocate for free software as well, I'd like to be informed if there are any 
freedom or distribution issues remaining.

Thanks,
John

P.S. I'm having trouble subscribing, so please CC me on replies.

-- 
Homepage: https://johnscott.me
Contact info:
        as a vCard: https://johnscott.me/me/me.vcf
        or as an LDAP directory entry: 
ldap://johnscott.me/CN=John%20Scott,DC=johnscott,DC=me

Attachment: signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part

Attachment: smime.p7s
Description: S/MIME cryptographic signature

Reply via email to