[Okular-devel] [Bug 267350] filling out a PDF form saves data to some file i ~/.kde/share/apps/okular/docdata/

[Dan Armbrust]

> If storing data to prefill form fields would be considered malware, people would
> have a hard time browsing the Internet since malware removal tools would have
> deinstalled all incarnations of browsers already.

One minor point.  A PDF viewer is not web browser.  Its much more like
a document editor.  That is how users expect it to behave - like other
document editors.
Don't you suppose folks would find it a little unsettling if
LibreOffice just silently saved anything you typed into it, without
asking, in a hidden location, every time you even opened a document
with it?

Because that is exactly what Okular does.

I only brought the webbrowsers into the conversation to point out that
other software that stores user data for auto-form filling always
gives the user control over said data.

>My take is that asking for a more secure implementation of a feature,
>especially since there are role models for how that works, has magnitudes more
>chances of being considered worth while than asking for removable of a feature
>that is considered useful by others inspite of not ideal implementation.

And another point.  Nobody has stepped forward to defend the current
"feature".  Because the "feature", in its current form is almost
completely useless.  The only possible thing I can think of that it
does is not lose your work if you close Okular, go out to lunch, then
come back and continue working.  But storing your work - aka - filled
form data for any significant amount of time?  No.  Its useless.  You
don't even know where it stored it.  You can't back it up.  You can't
tie it to the actual document you were working on.  You can't send it
to anyone else.  The "feature" does more harm than good.  It would be
better if it didn't even give the illusion of allowing you to save
data typed into form fields - because it doesn't.

It doesn't even _tell_ you that it didn't actually put the data into
the form.  You won't find out until you send the document to a
coworker, and they tell you it is blank.  The only thing this feature
will lead to is a horrible user experience.

That was why I suggested just shutting it off.  Or redirecting it to
/dev/null.  But the maintainers of Okular refuse to even talk about
it.  So,  here we are, 2 years later, with it still behaving in the
same brain-dead way.
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