US taxes: parsing postscript and/or pdf?

[Alan Miller]

Harry George (hgg9140 at seanet.com) wrote:
>If not, my next approach is to download IRS forms in PDF or
>Postscript, and then manipulate those templates.  That requires
>parsing the pdf or postscript, detecting named fields, putting in new
>data, and regenrating the printable format.

If the IRS-provided PDF forms are fillable PDFs, look into FDFs.  
Information should be available on FDF formats.

If you're looking at parsing the raw PDF or PS and trying to determine 
what's supposed to be fillable and what's not, good luck.  

Your best bet would probably be to check on what the PDFs actually 
support right now, and consider getting Acrobat to add fillable fields 
to them if needed.

ajm