Hey that is great. Please try my second link and see if that works for you.

I have come across Adobe PDFs which only seem to work when opened with Adobe plugins. Certainly in some situations an open source PDF program won't work.

@jdkaye I'm confused. Bouncing Ball worked exactly as it was supposed to with Reader and not at all with Okular.

If your 2nd link is SimpleFormCalculations then the results were the same. Nothing for Foxit or Adobe. With Okular I could enter data but I couldn't do any calculations.
jdk

But the only thing I see on the screen shots is the PRESS ME square moving from the centre to the right margin. Is that how it's supposed to work?
jdk

Yes, if you notice the "Press me" button changes to "Catch me" and tries to evade the mouse. Javascript built into the form. In reader with the calc form you enter variables and when you click into the "=" box the result is shown. Just simple examples but I've seen much more complicated forms.

Ah yes. Now I see. I must be missing some plugin for the Adobe 9 Reader. It certainly doesn't do what you have shown. As for the calculations, if there's a "= box" I can't see it. Adobe 9 is completely unresponsive. It doesn't behave as though it knows that the pdf file is a form. The one case where it behaves correctly is the Robot Arm file. It can move the robot arm around on the right-side as it should. However all the controls on the left-hand side are unresponsive.
jdk

Not sure why your Reader isn't working. As far as I know, no separate plugins are required.

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I don't know what I'm missing. I get this far (see below) and then no amount of clicking anywhere in the window allows me to enter any data anywhere.
jdk

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I'm at a loss. Could something be disabling javascript execution globally for security reasons?

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Me too. I must be missing something. Notice there is no Javascript item on my preferences.
jdk

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Yes, I see that. It stumps me. I just don't have a clue.

Edit: Looking around Google I see suggestions that javascript in Reader may not work properly if the default system "locale" is non-English. I see of course that you are in the U.K. so I hope you know I'm not trying to be insulting:
"Adobe Reader doesn't execute initial javascript code of 3D scene in pdf document. With friends we've tested several linux distributions, namely CentOS, Ubuntu, Arch Linux, Mandriva, OpenSUSE. Also several Adobe Reader versions like 9.4.6 or 9.1. No luck. For some reason though, it works fine in Fedora (with exactly the same Adobe Reader). Here is an example pdf for test: http://www.2shared.com/document/LIby...ious_dice.html . Just open the mysterious_dice.pdf and you should see a rotating dice. If you dont, javascript wasn't executed properly (it should be easy to check in Windows 7/XP or Fedora).

We thought that something is wrong in Reader settings (like disabled javascript), but javascript was always allowed. Then that maybe it is linux Adobe Reader bug, but again, why does it work in Fedora? So maybe some package(s) or something.

Another example is the Asymptote application, which uses javascript at the beginning for some scene settings (lights, camera position, etc) and especially with orthographic projection this problem shows up. More about this here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/asym.../topic/4021157.

Any idea what might be wrong with this? I will just add that javascript later on works, only the initial code is ignored. Thanks for any suggestion.

TheSil
November 18th, 2011, 06:31 PM
Alright, we managed to fix this behaviour, turned out that this is a problem on non-english linux systems with linux Adobe Reader. It has something to do with LC_NUMERIC variable, seems like Adobe Reader bug. Solution is to either use english system language or just run Adobe Reader with command like this:

LC_NUMERIC=C acroread

and then it works fine on non-english systems."
http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/inde...t-1882439.html

Nope, no worries. Being helpful (what you are doing) is a far cry from being insulting (what you are not doing). In fact I moved back to the UK from Italy a little over a year ago and was living in the PRC and then Spain before that so it's probable that I installed Adobe 9 whilst living abroad. It would seem strange to design a product that doesn't work based on your locale but then this is Adobe.

No, http://www.2shared.com/document/LIby...ious_dice.html does not work. It does ask me if I want to trust this document Then dice appear but they're "frozen"; no interaction is possible.

Maybe I'll rip out Adobe 9 and try reinstalling it now that I'm back on British soil. It would be extremely amusing if it did work like yours after that. Thanks again. Whoops, silly me. That's not possible any more. As I said, I've never received a pdf form that I couldn't fill in using Okular. If I ever do receive one I like that I can always use Xournal to do the job.
jdk

Thanks, I think we've established that for the great majority of us Okular or other software will be perfectly fine for working with most pdf's.

+1
jdk