Using Linux Mint 20.2 Uma Cinnamon.

I have a pdf form which I want to fill in and print to paper.

But when I type text into it, my text is too tiny. When printed to paper you would need a magnifying glass to read it.

The text of the form itself is the right size, the problem is that the text I type in is tiny.

Question: how do I make the text I fill in bigger, while keeping the other text in the form the same size?

I want to make the text I type into the form to be two or three times or more bigger, while keeping the other form text the same size.

I have had the same problem with every pdf form I have ever wanted to fill in.

I have tried using every available pdf reader but they all have the same problem. I have tried Evince, Ockular, Document Reader, LibreOffice, Chromium.

I only have this problem when I fill in pdf forms, nowhere else.

Thanks.

Question would be: did you actually print one out to see how it looks, versus just looking at it on screen??? Did you try it?? Because most fillable PDF's have embedded fonts and font sizes; changing the font size would require editing the master PDF. I've seen MANY look bad on screen that printed fine, because the line(s) may be set to auto-wrap or have other features embedded.

You can try flpsed to edit/change things arbitrarily, but the form itself may not be valid if it requires an e-signature or some other such thing.

Following your suggestion, I printed one out, but the text is still tiny.

And the other suggestion about flpsed???

There should be an option to change the font size. I have had this problem before and was able to increase the size.
I like to use Foxit Reader, not open source, but the free reader works very nice and has lots of editing options. They have a Linux version, and the MS version works well with Wine.

I have now installed and tried flpsed and it makes no difference, it does not appear to have any means of increasing the size of what I type in.

Top left corner; choose font size to use when entering text. You can enter it ANYWHERE using flpsed with any size...ignore the form fields. Look around in the software and try some things rather than just using it the same way you used any other PDF program.

Use masterpdf. It's not free, but you can adjust your fonts there and 'overwrite' your fillable sections. If you have the unregistered version, do not print, but save the file. Then open something like xpdf to print it. I have the paid version and use it for Government paperwork & red tape forms.

I tried all kinds of linux programs to type text into PDFs.
To my surprise, by far the best was firefox (I'm using firefox 119)
You can easily type text of any size, or colour, anywhere in a pdf opened with firefox.

Interesting. I remember encountering a "tiny input fonts" problem on –*of all places – a form published by the IRS. This wasn't on Linux: it was on MacOS (OS/X) and Windows. (It behaved the same on both.) The "tiny font" problem also occurred on printing. Finally, I concluded that it must be a problem with the file itself.

I finally found a user-feedback option buried on their website and reported the incident as "a file problem." A few days later, I actually got an email reply from them which said, "thank you." Thereafter, the form worked properly. I'm not conversant on the inner workings of the PDF file-format.

Yeah, font size is definitely handled when the form is built. Not a lot can be done, other than editing it as an image file (or using another type of editor like flpsed), which can put text ANYWHERE at ANY size. Then export back to PDF.

Or, you can print it and get a pen.

Please, just try opening the .pdf in firefox.
Try editing it, saving it and then opening it with something else.
It just works.

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