[Podofo-users] PDF Forms with non-standard annotations

[Dennis J. <den...@gm...>]

Hello,

    I am using PoDoFo in a project to fill-in a variety of US tax forms,
such as the US Federal 941 form and the Arizona A1-QRT.  I'm running into a
problem with the A1-QRT form [1] using PoDoFo to access all of the form
fields.

    According to PoDoFo, page #0 contains 26 form fields.  However, the
page/form actually has 34 fields.  I dug into the code in PoDoFo for
PdfPage::GetNumFields() and wrote a small program to dump all of the
annotations for a given page of a pdf.  The 34 annotations are all type
"ePdfAnnotation_Widget", but only 26 has a dictionary key "FT", per the
spec (ISO 32000:2008, section 12.7.3.1).  The other 8 fields lack this
dictionary key.  Yet in "Adobe Reader XI", the form is fully functional and
all 34 fields are operable.

   You can see the difference in PoDoFo-Browser.  Annotations 0 through 6
all have an 'FT' key and are text fields.  The next three are check boxes
and lack the "FT" key.

   Of course, I can bypass "PdfPage::GetField()" and roll my own, but
before doing so, I wanted to present my findings and ask:

1) How do these form fields work in Adobe Reader if they lack the "FT" key?

2) Should PoDoFo be changed to not require the presence of the "FT" key and
simply accept the presence of the "/n Subtype = /Widget" to indicate a form
field?

    Thank you for your time.



[1] http://www.azdor.gov/Forms/Withholding.aspx