On 12/15/2025 8:11 PM, Pablo Rodriguez via ntg-context wrote:
On 12/15/25 18:56, Henning Hraban Ramm wrote:
Hi again, I checked some old form issues (e.g. in my Chaos Post
complaints form,
[...]
* I didn’t yet check label/choice/popup/combo/signature fields.
Hi Hraban,
many thanks for checking fields.
I have checked the signature fields and we have problems with digitally
sign that with any other than “Acrobat”.
I have tested it (rather extensively) against the Arlington PDF model
(https://software.verapdf.org/develop/arlington/).
[Just in case anyone might wonder, it is a different validator than the
PDF/A-PDF/UA validator. This is just PDF-1.x or PDF-2.0 validator.]
The real issue here is that ConTeXt isn’t using the field parent/widget
child relationship totally right (I’m afraid).
“Acrobat” has no issue with that (since it merges both parent field and
child widget objects into a single one), but `pdfsig` from `poppler` and
“MuPDF-GL” end up adding digital signatures that are invisible to
“Acrobat” (but these are technically wrong).
I also have the impression (which I have to check with the people from
the Arlington project) that “Acrobat” may be failling to recognize valid
signatures (with field-widget single objects not expected by “Acrobat”).
I have a patch for `lpdf-fld.lmt` which fixes this, but it requires
fixing `poppler` (and probably any other software) first.
Just in case it might avoid you some work,
This parent / child stuff has always been a mess: fix this, break that.
It was in the standard before even acrobat did it all and then there was
a bugged inheritance of (e.g. check) field default values that partally
became a feature. Submitting bugs made little sense because after a
release the test / beta teams are disolved. By the time other pdf
processers catched op the mess was (imo) persistent.
A waste of time. Anyway, I have no 'full acrobat' to test and actually
try to avoid the reader with its aggressive 'ai wants to help making a
summary' kind of crap as well as the ever changing interfaces. Signing
is dubious anyway with the neccessity to use expensive tools (because
one can't use the free-ish web certificates) and (last time i checked)
hard coded root keys in viewers.
Hans
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