Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 48381
Use PDF as a watermark form
Last modified: 2013-08-07 15:12:27 UTC
I would like to see a feature added to swriter and scalc that would allow users to create documents and spreadsheets with a PDF files as a watermark background. I think this would be a killer-app feature and a lot of people would want to use it. Each year I have to fill out dozens of documents for a various companies and government agencies. All of these documents are available as PDF. What most people do is print them and then fill them out by hand. Then you take the paper and fax it back to the agency. If a PDF file could be used as a watermark background in a new document then people could fillout these forms electronicly and export to a new PDF and email the file back. Opening these electronic forms could work like a template file that has an ooBasic script to prompt people what text boxes need to be filled in. Why PDF? Almost all agencies that require forms to be filled out make them available as in PDF only. This feature would enable OpenOffice users to electronicly fill out the form but not require any changes to the original document. Very few agencies are willing to make the forms available in the original format and even fewer would be will to post the document as an OpenOffice file. I have been trying to so far is convert the PDF to a graphic and then use that as the watermark. That sucks because the quality is terrible. I cannot find any way to make OpenOffice open a PDF. If I could then a simple ooBasic script could do the trick. I think there is a lot of potential here to create big demand for applications created as OpenOffice documents like this. As just one example of how this could work; I am in Canada and all of our tax forms are PDF files that you can download and print. If OpenOffice had this feature then I could open scalc and have calculation cells that overlap the boxes on the forms where numbers have to be entered. I could enter all of the numbers and have the calculations done for me automaticly. A simple ooBasic script could prompt me with a few questions and my taxes would be done. I could then save this file and if I want I could print it to be sent in via postal service. The scripts and boxes that need to be used could be saved as a template so that next year when new tax forms come out I can do it again. Most of the time there would be little or no changes needed to the template from year to year. A lot of people in Canada want some form of tax software for Linux. This could be the best way to do that. Legal disclaimers aside for a moment the issue of maintaining a simple OpenOffice template to do this would be very simple work for the Linux community. OpenOffice could be the application of choice for doing your taxes. This is just one example of how this could be used. The possibilities are endless.
one for the requirements team
OpenOffice.org Issue Tracker - Feedback Request. The Issue you raised is currently assigned to 'Requirements' pending review, but has not been updated within the last 3 years. Please consider re-testing with one of the latest versions of OOo, as the problem(s) may have already been addressed. Either use the recent stable version: http://download.openoffice.org/index.html or consider trying the new OOo 3 BETA (still in testing): http://download.openoffice.org/3.0beta/ Please report back the outcome so this Issue may be Closed or Progressed as necessary - otherwise it may be Resolved as Invalid in the future. You may also wish to search for (and note) any duplicates of this Issue that may have advanced further by checking the Issue Tracker: http://www.openoffice.org/issues/query.cgi Many thanks, Andrew Cleaning-up and Closing old Issues as part of: ~ The Grand Bug Squash, pre v3 ~ http://marketing.openoffice.org/3.0/announcementbeta.html