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   翠星石 (suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com)'s status on Friday, 26-May-2023 14:53:21 JST 翠星石

   in reply to

   • Mr Salteena is not quite a gentleman
   @stephen >Even a Google Form would be better
   "google forms" would be worse, as I'm pretty sure you need to run proprietary software in the form of JavaScript to even see the form.
   
   PDF forms are an annoyance, but you can just install Okular or Evince.
   
   Sure there are better ways, but if there was the choice between proprietary software or PDF forms, I'll always go for the latter.
   • Embed this notice
     Mr Salteena is not quite a gentleman (stephen@microbe.vital.org.nz)'s status on Friday, 26-May-2023 14:53:23 JST Mr Salteena is not quite a gentleman
     My SiL is trying to re-register as a teacher. The NZ Teachers Council has a form to fill out - and it's a PDF! SiL household is not exactly high income and she has an old laptop running Linux Mint. Predictably, the PDF looked a mess and she was highly stressed.
     
     I fixed the situation by installing Okular, which works fine with PDF forms (why isn't Okular just standard with distributions these days?) but really. This is just the shittiest way to implement a business process. Even a Google Form would be better (and there are many better options than that).
     
     Of course the Teachers Council is not going to do better because they don't have the staff, the budget or the incentives. And so the assumption that you have a recent device with a recent Windows or MacOS and/or family and friends for tech support is just baked in. I hate it.