Tuesday December 14th, 2021 NCLUG Meeting

[Brian Sturgill]

Ok, inspired by Stephen's add a PDF signature via Scribus, I decided to
look for an easier way.
It's kind of sad really, on MacOS, you just use the PDF "Preview" program
to do all of this...
Anyway, I think I found options that work easier than Scribus (which had an
awkward interface for editing).

To fill in a PDF form, use "evince". It just works.
I tried on the IRS's W-9 PDF and it worked great.
That PDF has two spots without "Form Fields"... Signature and Date.
To fill those out, the easiest option I found is "xournal".
It lets you easily edit on top of PDFs.
I made the signature using "inkscape"... just save the SVG... "xournal"
supports SVG.
You can use the Text tool in "xournal" to fill in the Date field.

Not perfect, but the tools are a lot less clumsy than Scribus.
Alas, I could not find a tool which allowed you to do both forms and add
images.

Both "evince" and "xournal" are available from the ubuntu archives.

Brian

On Tue, Dec 14, 2021 at 11:39 PM Bob Proulx <bob at proulx.com> wrote:

> j dewitt wrote:
> > What: Tuesday December 14th, 2021 NCLUG Meeting
>
> Due to working on my car today I arrived late to the meeting.  But my
> multi-year project to get my Mazda running so far is successful!
> Passed the emissions test easily today.  Now only the DMV is standing
> between me and a license plate!
>
> When I arrived Stephen was demonstrating Scribus and using it for the
> ability to fill in PDF forms.
>
>     https://www.scribus.net/
>
> Bob suggested that he had heard but not verified that one of ffmpeg
> and/or ImageMagick also has the ability to fill in PDF forms.
> Unverified.  But I am looking for something that will fill in PDF
> forms using free software.
>
> There was a lull in topics at about the half hour.  No one else
> jumping in immediately to fill the void Bob ranted for a couple of
> minutes on the trials and tribulations of working with systemd on a
> server trying to get it to support multiple FastCGI processes.
> Eventually I was able to rewrite the unit file and bludgeon it into
> submission.  But I was bruised from the experience.
>
> Joe then asked questions about Vanette's Mint system.  It's a Mint 20
> system.  But it is having a problem with networking or something and
> it is preventing it from working.  The group jumped in to help based
> upon the description.  They are going to fire up the system in a bit
> and then hopefully we can figure it out.
>
> Vanette is still working on developing a phone running Linux and all
> free software.  The discussion mutated into talking about Termux and
> that it seems to have stopped getting updates.  And then discussing
> using Termux ssh versus Terminus versus Juice SSH versus other things.
> Then discussing how to build apps and other for Android.
>
> This segued into Alex talking about his Librem 5 Linux phone.  It
> "works" but doesn't do phone things great.  However it is a pretty fun
> device that you can apt-get update and apt-get upgrade.  It's running
> Purism OS.  Battery life is limited.  Camera functionality only
> recently became functional.  But Firefox now works with GPU
> acceleration.  And works with the full native Firefox addons.  Unlike
> Android Firefox for which only a subset of addons work.  Has a
> headphone jack.  Has a replaceable battery.
>
> Matt demonstrated a Microsoft Surface Go with an quite small Atrios
> keyboard configured as Colemak running Arch!  This made for a very
> small lightweight "laptop" combination that was the size of a full
> size tablet.  Running Arch!
>
> We then fired up Vanette's machine and debugged the networking problem
> that was preventing other things from working.  A little remedial
> network debugging and things were fixed right up.
>
> And with that we adjourned.  Quite a few of us went to Slyce Pizza for
> dinner and further continued conversation.  Slyce was actually open
> this time which I note only because because last time we tried to go
> there it was closed for remodeling.
>


-- 
Brian Sturgill
President and CTO
Ataman Software, Inc.