SPUG: help with dynamic pdf forms

Jay Scherrer jay at scherrer.com
Tue Jul 15 16:13:25 CDT 2003


Since your still in the planning stage,
Here anothr tidbit.
With Practical Tax, we have to print to hundreds of forms with an ever growing 
list of variables, And to top it off they have to be exact duplicates with 
the IRS.
Here's some pointer's:
If you're using an artsy dev team, try to create a good "DTD".
one that will be recognized by the artsy's and the dev'rs.
Have the artsy's insert the tags conforming to your DTD.
Once you have the DTD tags down, it's only a matter of hashing the tags.
I don't know if this will work with .pdf , it should, but I know it works very 
well with .ps files. And you don't even need to mess with coordinates or the 
graphic structure. "Just the tags man.... just the tags".

Jay

  
On Tuesday 15 July 2003 09:12 am, Alan wrote:
> I can't go into the details too much due to NDA, but they are wanting to
> produce print quality items with user input in them.  I have talked to
> some other people and they suggested using FDF files which may solve the
> problem (from what I understand it's a text file with form field
> contents and a link to the pdf itself, and that is displayed onscreen
> with the fields filled out), but it does not allow people to save the
> "final" pdf (with user input).  The design is all in PDF form (as artsy
> types like) but I'll take a look at pdf->ps->[fill in fields]->pdf.  The
> project is just in the planning research stage right now anyway.
>
> Thanks for the idea though.
>
> alan
>
> On Tue, Jul 15, 2003 at 08:52:51AM -0700, Jay Scherrer wrote:
> > Alan,
> > This is exactly how we produce our tax forms using Practical Tax.
> > Can you use PostScript?
> > We had found that if we were to convert the form from PDF to PostScript
> > and anded our variables ($var) into the form entry point. If you play
> > around with your PostScript you'll find that your entries will be
> > contained within  a set of parenthisis "( )". Create a template that
> > contains your variables within those parenthisis. Then all you have to do
> > is assign values to those $vars and have Perl print the file.
> > This enabled us to parse print the .ps page through Perl. Basicly
> > replacing any ($var) with your inputed value. We had to extend it a
> > little by creating an XML file for our records allowing us to traverse
> > the hash and replacing the tagged entry with the matched $variable.
> >
> > Jay
> >
> > On Monday 14 July 2003 12:08 pm, Alan wrote:
> > > Howdy folks.  I have a project coming up involving filling data into
> > > PDF forms created by a design firm.  I'm pretty sure that this can be
> > > done, and hopefully relatively easily.
> > >
> > > Basically what I need to do is take user input and insert it into a
> > > pre-set position / form field in an already created static PDF.  I'm
> > > not all that familiar with acrobat, but it has a "form field" tool that
> > > allows creation of text fields, checkboxes, etc.  All I need to do is
> > > take user input and stick it into those form fields (I only care about
> > > the text fields).
> > >
> > > Obviously creating the pdfs from scratch via PDF-Lib isn't an option.
> > > Can anyone point me at whatever the in vogue tool / library for this
> > > is?
> > >
> > > Regards and thanks from up north
> > >
> > > alan
> >
> > --
> > Personalized e-mail and domain names:
> > <http://netidentity.com/BI3CCYFM

-- 
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