pdf document from healthcare.gov not opening

[sktsee]

On Sat, 12 Jul 2014 14:43:22 -0500, Tommy Trussell wrote:

> On Fri, Jul 11, 2014 at 9:52 PM, Brandon Vincent
> <Brandon.Vincent at asu.edu>
> wrote:
> 
>> On Fri, Jul 11, 2014 at 3:18 PM, Tommy Trussell
>> <tommy.trussell at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > I hope someone else can point to a public example of an
>> > XFA-containing
>> PDF
>> > file folks can test.
>>
>>
>> http://apply07.grants.gov/apply/opportunities/packages/opp14-518-
cfda47.070.pdf
>>
>>
>>
> Thanks for the example!
> 
> I'm running Ubuntu 12.04 with all updates, and the only application that
> can open it seems to be Adobe Reader (from the Ubuntu Partner
> repository).
> It's acroread 9.5.5-1precise1 and although it can open the file it's
> VERY VERY slow to redraw the screen at first. But it CAN open it. Some
> others have had trouble, but as I mentioned I'm using the one packaged
> for by Adobe for Ubuntu 12.04.
> 
> For the record, I also tried these, none of which produced more than the
> "To view the full contents of this document" message:
> Mozilla's PDF viewer for Firefox "Document Viewer" (Evince) 3.4.0
> LibreOffice 4.2.5.2 (Draw module or Writer; not sure)
> GIMP 2.6.12 PDF Chain 0.3.3 (GUI for pdftk)
> pdftk 1.44 xpdf 3.02 (this one crashed)
> pdfShuffler 0.6.0 Krita 2.4.0
> 
> 
> As I suspected, pdftk wasn't able to help the situation. I used PDF
> Chain (a GUI front end to pdftk) to have pdftk stripped out the XFA, and
> then even Adobe Reader couldn't open it. :-(

If OP doesn't mind not using a native linux client pdf reader, then he 
could use Wine + Tracker Software's portable version of its PDF-Xchange 
Viewer (http://www.tracker-software.com/product/pdf-xchange-viewer). It 
has a platinum rating in Wine's App database and does open the example pdf 
listed above. It has a much smaller footprint than Adobe Reader Linux 
(zip package is 8MB and executable is 14MB) and a decent set of features 
for a free reader including Javascript and OCR support.

I did run into a problem with the application crashing when clicking a 
button (like Cancel) in the example pdf. But the Windows version also 
crashes, so it doesn't appear to be due to running in it under Wine. So 
it's not perfect replacement for Adobe Reader, but it usually handles 
whatever Evince can't pretty well.

-- 
sktsee