[Libreoffice-bugs] [Bug 126642] New: Allow PDF form export with different defaults based on Archive setting

[bugzilla-daemon at bugs.documentfoundation.org]

https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=126642

            Bug ID: 126642
           Summary: Allow PDF form export with different defaults based on
                    Archive setting
           Product: LibreOffice
           Version: 6.3.0.1 rc
          Hardware: All
                OS: All
            Status: UNCONFIRMED
          Severity: major
          Priority: medium
         Component: Printing and PDF export
          Assignee: libreoffice-bugs at lists.freedesktop.org
          Reporter: glogow at fbihome.de

I've been trying to fix the PDF form export dialog w.r.t. the Archive (PDF/A)
setting. Currently we disallow form exports for PDF/A-1, but allow it for
PDF/A-2.

see filter/source/pdf/pdfexport.cxx line ~600

case 1: // PDF/A-1
  mbExportFormFields = false;
case 2: // PDF/A-2
  // no mbExportFormFields setting

According to all my sources there is no difference in form restrictions /
allowances between PDF/A-1 and PDF/A-2, so that doesn't make any sense.

OTOH according to http://blog.soliddocuments.com/2012/12/pdfa-1-vs-pdfa-2.html
there is a difference for comments, which we doesn't seem to handle, but that
can be an other bug…

Still normally you actually don't want to keep the form controls in a PDF/A.
And since PDF/A is for archiving, in the very most cases it doesn't make any
sense to create a form when selecting PDF/A, as people shouldn't change the
form values. So the document just contains something that looks like a form,
but doesn't allow the user to change it.

All this stems from the changes made to fix bug 62728, which explicitly allowed
forms for the new PDF/A-2 support.

So here are some proposals to fix this:
1. Allow form export for all PDF types
2. Have different "Create form" settings depending on the "Archive" checkbox.

I have two different ideas to handle this:
1. keep the dialog but change the string of the "Create PDF form" checkbox to
"Create PDF form (Archive)" depending on the "Archive" setting
or
2. just add a 2nd checkbox named "Create PDF form (Archive)" and handle it the
opposite of the "Create PDF form" checkbox.

Currently I'm in favor of the 2nd checkbox.

If we don't allow the string change, we could simply disable form export for
PDF/A for older releases, as this is the most common use case. We had a lot of
users creating "wrong" PDF/A document after creating normal PDF forms. This is
even more annoying, as LO defaults to "Create PDF form" on export.

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