[members at lugog] Companies admin on Linux (was Introduction:)

[john lewis]

On Fri, 26 Nov 2010 10:22:21 +0000 (GMT)
MJ Ray <mjr at phonecoop.coop> wrote:

> john lewis wrote:
> > I came up with this last week when I tried to submit an on-line
> > annual balance sheet to Companies House and found their Adobe
> > template didn't work with Linux and had to fire up windows XP on
> > the laptop in order to submit it. However I have been told that
> > next year I will be able to use Linux as Companies House are
> > updating things to make that possible.
> 
> Ooh, heck, I'm about to do this shuffle myself.  Is that WebFiling?
> What exactly "didn't work"?

I was trying to file a balance sheet for a dormant company and
since I'd had no problem setting the Company up using WebFiling under
linux I didn't expect to have any problems with the balance sheet. 

All went well, once I'd worked out what I had to fill in, until I got
to the 'print balance sheet' stage. Then I found I couldn't print it
despite having a networked printer which 'just worked' with anything
else I sent to it. 

So I printed to file and then tried to submit the balance sheet again
and got an error message about a missing certificate and a suggestion
to run a command from the command line (see! it is needed
sometimes). 

I got the cert installed, checked it was in ~/.adobe/Acrobat/9.0/cert
only to find it still wasn't accepted. 

I emailed customer support at CH and got this reply     

> I have heard of this before and it is simply that the Linux systems
> are not compatible with the Adobe Templates. 
> We do on our website provide the minimum system requirements for
> using the templates in which we state the following:- 
> 
> Adobe Reader 9.1 system requirements: 
> Windows 
> Intel 1.3 GHz processor 
> Microsoft Windows 2000 with Service Pack 4, Windows Server 2003 and
> 2008; Windows XP Professional, Home Edition, or Tablet PC Edition
> with Service Pack 2 or 3; Windows Vista Home Basic, Home Premium,
> Business, Ultimate, or Enterprise with or without Service Pack 1
> 128MB of RAM (256MB recommended) 335MB of available hard disk space
> Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0, 6.0 with Service Pack 1, 7.0 or 8.0;
> Firefox 2.0 or 3.0 
> 
> Macintosh 
> PowerPC G4, G5 or Intel processor 
> Mac OS X v10.4.11-10.5.6 
> 128MB of RAM (256MB recommended) 
> 405MB of available hard-disk space 
> Safari 2.0.4 or later   

> I realise this is cold comfort having found difficulties submitting
> but hopefully it will serve as a reminder if submitting accounts in
> the future via the Adobe product. One bit of good news however is
> that we are currently developing a simple online dormant accounts web
> based form which if your Linux System works with our Webfiling
> Service should allow you from January/February this year to access
> and file without having to download or use any Adobe product. This
> will hopefully solve this issue in the future for you.   

This will solve my problem next time around but not for anyone
filing anything more complicated than dormant company balance sheets

At least I got a quick response and it wouldn't hurt for anyone else
trying to use WebFiling to nag Companies House to fix things so Linux
users aren't discriminated against.

I'm told they actually use Linux on their servers so should have some
in house expertise. 


-- 
John Lewis
using Debian sid