I'm using pdftk to fill in the form with the generated fdf.
In the PDF form, the form field is configured as a number field with 2 decimal point, and the negative value will be showing with parentheses, for example, -4444 will become (4444.00)
Using any PDF viewers and changing the value on form did make the form display the value correctly with the behaviour explained above (negative value will become value with parentheses)
Tested also with the FDF (by importing to the form), the negative value will be displayed correctly as well.
But when using the pdftk fill-form action, the negative value remains as it is without changing the display, which is still showing -4444 and not (4444.00)
Is anyone experienced this before / has a solution for this?
Update #1
I've also tested Apache PDFBox, it has the same issue :(
And now I'm trying to achieve this by using the PDF's javascript, any clue that this way will works?
Update #2
came across this thread How to refresh Formatting on Non-Calculated field and refresh Calculated fields in Fillable PDF form and so gave it a try with iText as well. However still unable to make it works
Finally, i've found some ways to get the formatting works in the PDF form fields.
Approach #1
Requirements
pdftk
PDF form with javascript
In the PDF, create a "Document Javascript" (see how) and re-assign the form's value to make it dirty as mentioned by Denis in the thread of Update #2. The script could be as simple as below:
var text1 = this.getField('text1');
text1.value = text1.value;
Downside
Javascript will only be triggered when you open the PDF, and if you would like to set the PDF with some ownerPassword to prevent user edit the file, the javascript will just failed because of read-only form fields. Otherwise, imagine you have 100 form fields in the PDF, re-assign each of them is a nightmare.
Approach #2
iText
PDF form
I personally will prefer this approach. The powerful iText already has the API to set the form field and at the same time formatting the field display (see how). The generated PDF is ready to print as well with the correct format.
Downside
Either using the iText API to find out the existing format of the form field, or you will hard code the format in your codes. Require more efforts than using the pdftk.
I'm using a simpler version of ChinKang's #1.
In Tools -> Document Javascripts:
this.calculateNow();
One thing to check is in Tools -> Set field calculation order that any calculations are ordered appropriately.
I then use https://github.com/ccnmtl/fdfgen and pdftk to fill the forms in.
The only gotcha is that you cannot flatten the PDF
Related
I'm using Extract Form Fields to get data from a PDF. But upon selecting the area where the desired text is located, the "Value" text area in the popup should be automatically populated with desired text, but that isn't the case. The "Value" field is staying blank.
Any idea what might be causing this?
you need to check whether your PDF has handwritten content or it is a scanned file.
if your PDF does not satisfy above criteria you can easily automate your PDF using Automation anywhere by selecting the area. if your PDF is invoice or bill or any type of GST forms better to use IQ Bot.
Is there a way to determine the text that will actually display in a PDTextField when the PDF prints? If I call setValue and then getValue, it returns all of the text even though it will not all display.
I am trying to fill out a form with a limited size multiline text field that has the notation to attach another page for more details. I would like to limit the text to that which will display and generate the added detail page.
Thanks for indulging a PDFbox newbie.
There is no direct way to find that out as the details of the text layout such as line breaks, padding, line spacing are hidden inside the non public class PlainTextFormatter inside the org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.interactive.formpackage. So you'd need to replicate that code.
PDFBox tries to resemble the calculations done by Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader but the details of such calculations are not part of the PDF specification. So doing your calculation is only valid for a similar layout model. Other form filling applications might have a slightly different layout model and as a result your results will not apply to these.
In addition to that Acrobat (and PDFBox) place text although it might be partially clipped. Look at the results of the AlignmentTest.javaunit test to see what I mean. So one might have a different expectation to what 'fitting' really means.
As I've thought about passing the information about which text fitted back to the calling application anyway I've opened an enhancement request https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/PDFBOX-3413 for that.
I'm writing some logic to build a large single PDF file that our users can print at their convenience. I'm using Java's iText library (through Clojure's clj-pdf).
I'm trying to have the PDF show the same exact template form on every single page, however I can't seem to find any documentation or indication that one can have PDF content "fit to a page".
The text in these forms varies a little bit, so there's a chance it might require more of fewer text lines per page. This means that the content has a chance of spilling over to the next page, or being too short, making the next page creep up into the previous one, breaking the requirement of "one form per page" for the rest of the document.
I'm trying to figure out if my option is pretty much only to manually check the length of the text on each page and potentially crop it by hand if I goes over n lines, or if the PDF format somehow supports a smart way of having paragraphs+tables+headings all fit in one page. Some UI systems allow you to control how spill-over is handled, anywhere from cropping to resizing the font, so I'm curious if PDF supports anything of that sort.
Edit: ended up going with pagebreaks for simplicity, wasn't aware of that option when I wrote this question.
If you want to take control over the space taken by text, for instance to fit it on a single page, the way to go would be to create a ColumnText object and to add the content in simulation mode. If the text fits the page, add it for real. If it doesn't, use a smaller font size. This is demonstrated in the MovieAds example where snippets of text are fitted into AcroForm fields.
I have built an application that automates the filling out of form fields inside a pdf. It then takes various assets and combines them together to generate a "print ready" product. All of this is accomplished using the magic of iTextSharp. When form fields are populated, they are then flattened to text. The problem is that even with the fonts embedded they aren't really attached to the form fields in a meaningful way (like straight text elements are) and the printers are complaining that the pdf is generating licensing errors due to this. I researched this a bit and it just seems to be the nature of how form fields are.
The artists we are working with requested that we research a way to "outline" the text that is created from flattening the form fields. I found that running the PDF Optimizer with a custom preset allows for Text Outlining in Acrobat, and even better I can generate an Acrobat Sequence that runs this command on the pdf. The problem is that Sequences can not be automated, at all.
I found a plug-in called AutoBatch that allows for the execution of Sequences on the command line through a batch file. The downside is that this would require installing Acrobat Pro and the Plug-in on the server this application will be running on. Further it seems like an overkill solution just to outline the text in the pdf. For all I know at this point iTextSharp may allow me to do this programmatic, but searching for such a thing on google returns little results and nothing relevant.
So the question: Is there a better way to outline text in a pdf than the current solution I have implemented or am I kind of stuck?
TLDR; PDF is generated w/ non-standard fonts. I need to "outline" this text to send it to the printer. Currently using AutoBatch Acrobat Plug-In to execute Acrobat Sequence from the Command Line. Seems excessive, wondering if anyone knows a better way to automate font outlining.
I am also in a printing environment and have used forms for "Box Covers" plenty of times to shorten the code used to produce box covers.
I simple us "pdfStamper.FormFlattening = true;" and the printers (Xerox DP180 and DC5000) has no problems in using the PDF.
The moment I leave out FormFlattening the printer gives a lot of errors regarding the PDF.
If you are using FormFlattening then check if the printer has the font locally installed in order for it to reference the font from the print engine instead of the PDF resources.
I'm trying to build a web app to programmatically fill out a PDF form. I am going to configure my form first in Adobe Acrobat, then write a Java app with iText to fill out all the form fields via user input from the web. The base form I need to fill out comes from the US government. They created form fields with extremely large kerning (character spacing) values I need to change. However, there appears to be no way to modify this value in the Acrobat UI.
Does anyone know how to manipulate character spacing on form fields in Acrobat 8.0 for Windows? I could try to use iText to programmatically manipulate the kerning of the original document, but this would be much more tedious.
I believe I figured this out: kerning is called "combing" in acrobat, and each of the form fields have been "combed". The strange thing is this option isn't checked when I view the properties of the form field, but "combing" is the behaviour I was attempting to replicate.