Created attachment 186881 [details] Example file from Writer with content controls Attached example file contains one of each content control types Writer currently supports. When saved as PDF, these are not visible except for the image placeholder. 1. Open attached file 2. Save as PDF, open it in some PDF viewer -> The content controls texts are not visible. Version: 7.6.0.0.alpha0+ (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community Build ID: 006b35d50024b1932d84380b5d2fec1f7066bccd CPU threads: 14; OS: Windows 10.0 Build 19045; UI render: default; VCL: win Locale: en-US (hu_HU); UI: en-US Calc: threaded
Created attachment 186882 [details] The example file saved to PDF
Created attachment 186883 [details] The example file in Writer and its PDF version in Acrobat
Another observation: unchecking the Archive box in the PDF options dialog makes these appear.
Also: Having the Create PDF form box is also needed. So enabling Archive with "Create PDF form" box together makes them disappear, if only one of them is checked, they appear. But then: what's the point of having an Archive PDF with fillable form controls? Maybe a bit of UI trickery is enough to fix this?
Couldn't confirm the buggy behavior with Version: 7.5.2.2 (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community Build ID: 53bb9681a964705cf672590721dbc85eb4d0c3a2 CPU threads: 6; OS: Linux 5.14; UI render: default; VCL: kf5 (cairo+xcb) Locale: de-DE (de_DE.UTF-8); UI: de-DE Calc: threaded Works also with Version: 7.6.0.0.alpha0+ (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community Build ID: 3ec73488e447a693a14a773a7fb96938036c0324 CPU threads: 6; OS: Linux 5.14; UI render: default; VCL: kf5 (cairo+xcb) Locale: de-DE (de_DE.UTF-8); UI: en-US Calc: threaded Content controls are visible in both exports. Tested with openSuSE 15.4 64bit rpm Linux.
Could confirm the behavior if PDF-Options → General → General → Archive and PDF-Options → General → General → Create PDF-Form are both activated. If only one of them has been activated it will work well. If there are "normal" form controls these controls won't be shown also. Tested this with a textbox.
found out the following, testing with Evince: the form controls are painted if this key is present below /AcroForm: /NeedAppearances true it is explicitly omitted when signing is enabled, or any version of PDF/A. however, the form controls themselves are in the PDF, and if you know where they are you can click and select the forms (at least in Evince). A flag specifying whether to construct appearance streams and appearance dictionaries for all widget annotations in the document (see 12.7.4.3, "Variable text"). Default value: false. A PDF writer shall include this key, with a value of true, if it has not provided appearance streams for all visible widget annotations present in the document. i don't have PDF/A specs so it's not clear if "/NeedAppearances true" would be allowed by any of the versions (could be copypasta, there is another form-related check elsewhere that is only for version 1).