PDF widget not displaying PDF form data

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strongbow
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PDF widget not displaying PDF form data

Post by strongbow » Fri Oct 10, 2025 7:24 am

Trying out the PDF widget (to export page images to JPG) and while this "works", the displayed PDF contains form fields that have entries but these are not displayed when opened with the PDF widget.

I could use the browser widget to load the PDF but this doesn't enable me to scale the container effectively AFAIK to increase the output resolution by doubling or similar before export.

Has anyone else seen this issue? Any suggestions/alternatives (multiplatform)?

MacOS 26.0.1
LC 10.0.2

Thanks in advance and cheers!
Alan

strongbow
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Re: PDF widget not displaying PDF form data

Post by strongbow » Fri Oct 10, 2025 7:40 am

On further investigation, sounds like this may be a limitation of the PDFium library, on which the widget is built...?

jacque
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Re: PDF widget not displaying PDF form data

Post by jacque » Fri Oct 10, 2025 6:13 pm

Have you considered using "export snapshot" to create the jpgs? The drawback is that you'd get a series of images if the PDF is more than one page.
Jacqueline Landman Gay | jacque at hyperactivesw dot com
HyperActive Software | http://www.hyperactivesw.com

strongbow
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Re: PDF widget not displaying PDF form data

Post by strongbow » Fri Oct 10, 2025 9:54 pm

Hi Jacque, yes, that's what I'm doing, it's easy to do. BUT the problem is that the PDF widget does not display the form data. i.e. the fields in the form that have data entered into them.

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Re: PDF widget not displaying PDF form data

Post by jacque » Sun Oct 12, 2025 6:02 pm

What form of the export command are you using? If I remember correctly using a rectangle rather than an object takes a screenshot of whatever is visible within the rect. If the form data is showing on screen, it should be captured with the screenshot. It may be pixelated though.
Jacqueline Landman Gay | jacque at hyperactivesw dot com
HyperActive Software | http://www.hyperactivesw.com

strongbow
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Re: PDF widget not displaying PDF form data

Post by strongbow » Mon Oct 13, 2025 12:47 am

Nothing to do with the export - the form data is not displayed within the PDF widget on-screen. The export to jpg works fine, the PDF widget does not. Sorry for not making that clear. :-)

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Re: PDF widget not displaying PDF form data

Post by jacque » Mon Oct 13, 2025 1:28 am

I see. So there's a flaw in the widget, and I don't think there's much you can do outside of writing a bug report.
Jacqueline Landman Gay | jacque at hyperactivesw dot com
HyperActive Software | http://www.hyperactivesw.com

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Re: PDF widget not displaying PDF form data

Post by strongbow » Mon Oct 13, 2025 2:25 am

Yes, though AFAICS, there won't be a solution as the underlying PDFium library does not support it. Presumably the answer is to get the business edition containing the XPDF lib.

But... I was wondering if anyone else had found a solution for this, perhaps using javascript handlers within a browser widget - though it seems like this may require loading the javascript library PDF.js.

Will let you know if I come up with a reasonable solution. Cheers! :-)

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