-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 06/20/2012 06:39 AM, Walther Koehler wrote: > High Tom, > > yes PDF is free meaning you have not to pay in advance, a least as you use > only basic functions and its not a commercial use. But what when you receive > a document with special features? Ask for another format, or ask to file the same document in some other way. Complain, complain, complain. Be very precise about why it's not a good practice to do that. > > Its the same situation I had at the university long time ago: At this time > MSWord was "free" in the sense that nobody cared where you get your license > from, and all students used it and requesetd its use in their offces later > on. > > Walther
To the extent that LibreOffice integrates PDF import and export functions, there isn't much point in extending this discussion much longer unless one can propose a valid, better/equivalent alternative. I personally think an online implementation (via web forms+database/email) is better suited for this specific case. I can't see a good reason to use PDF forms except in exceptionally highly custom-formatted scenarios. Then again, if your questionnaire requires such formatting it may benefit from some simplification. Here's a list of possible technical issues of using PDF: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pdf#Technical_issues If and when there is absolutely no alternative to using a PDF, I'd suggest you point your audience to this resource for a good, free+open source PDF reader: http://pdfreaders.org/ Adobe's reader software is notoriously bloated, and the frequent updates are there because the reader includes several other dozen formats that Adobe wants to be readable on every system it's installed on (in addition to advanced features only available in commercial versions) What about patents and openness of the PDF standard? This page provides such details: http://pdfreaders.org/os.en.html Microsoft licenses are vey much 100% free and legal to obtain by students/faculty staff pretty much worldwide now: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DreamSpark_Premium It's not the same situation with MS software although I see your point. No Microsoft software is considered an ISO standard and there aren't 100% free open source software implementations of any MS software that I know of as is the case with the PDF format, so I'd be use such examples with care - otherwise you'll get the opposite effect when trying to advocate free, open standards. Cheers, Fabián Rodríguez http://libreoffice.magicfab.ca -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (GNU/Linux) Comment: PGP/Mime available upon request Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iEYEARECAAYFAk/hyZoACgkQfUcTXFrypNWsVQCgm79jvFzFyVo4e8WiCUnjUc3X DCoAnRlz0eTRYkFTHMgfcmDqHiAVav+4 =1sT9 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- For unsubscribe instructions e-mail to: users+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
