[Debconf-team] Free software for filling XFA forms

[David Bremner <david@tethera.net>]

Daniel Pocock <daniel@pocock.pro> writes:

>
> It seems the Canadian immigration authorities are not going to welcome
> all Debian people though:
>
> http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/pdf/kits/forms/IMM5257E.pdf
>
> Anybody who has to apply for a visa will have to install and run
> non-free software.  This is very sad, because Canada is otherwise
> quite a nice place to visit.  Americans, Europeans and Australians
> won't need to fill in the PDF, but many other people (or spouses who
> are from other countries) will be stuck.

For a long time I've wanted a tool in Debian to fill in XFA forms. AFAIK
the only existing free library which supports this is itext java library

http://developers.itextpdf.com/examples/itext-action-second-edition/chapter-8#331-xfamovies.java

Using this library it might be possible to make a simple tool for
filling these forms.  I don't know if the metadata needed can be
extracted using free tools.