Why doesn't Preview on Mac respect the "read only" flag in PDF files?

Question

I'm working on a django project using pdfrw to fill a fillable pdf form.

I'm setting the Ff = 1 flag in order to make the fields read-only.

for annotation in template_path.Root.AcroForm.Fields:
    #  the code goes here
    annotation.update(pdfrw.PdfDict(Ff=1))

This seems to work in every viewer I tested so far except for "Preview" the native mac app to open and display pdf files.

Why is that? Am I missing something? Is there another way of achieving this?

score -1 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 23 '21 at 00:30

-1

You are not missing anything.

Preview.app is POISON for fillable forms. This piece of s**tware must be avoided at all price in connection with forms.

Workaround: have your users use something useful, such as Adobe Acrobat (Reader).

answered Feb 23 '21 at 00:30

Max Wyss

1

Wow, that's emotional... ;) – mkl Feb 23 '21 at 05:42
1

And that from someone noodling around with Macs for more than 30 years… – Max Wyss Feb 23 '21 at 06:11
Do you know if there is a way of getting the field location on the page using pdfrw? – Sebastian M Feb 23 '21 at 10:21

1 Answers1