Any readers besides Adobe Acrobat and Reader that will allow me to fill out and save dynamic XAF form created with LiveCycle?
Dynamic XFA forms are rather proprietary. There may be some viewers available, mainly from the greater SAP environment (which licensed Adobe's technology).
On iDevices, Readdle claims that PDFExpert can handle XFA files, but it may be just static forms.
Related
I need to fill out several PDF forms that contain XFA files, and then print them. I can only print them from a Linux machine. It has Acroread installed, but it's not working properly, besides it being outdated.
What I can do is fill them out in my Macbook. So my question is: once I fill them, can I somehow export them to "regular" pdf files that a viewer in Linux (like Okular, Evince, etc.) can open and print? That would be great since I would just e-mail them to myself and print them from the Linux computer.
Thanks!
The problem you describe was the subject of a talk with title "Who's afraid of XFA?" video/slide deck.
The solution posted by Max Wyss (fill out and print the form using Acrobat Reader DC) is certainly possible if you have only a limited number of documents that can be processed semi-automatically. If you want a fully automated process, this typically isn't a viable solution. For instance, if the form needs to be filled out in the context of a web application and people need to get the PDF in their browser as a response to a request to your Linux server, you won't use your Macbook as a server, will you?
In that case, you need a library that injects the XML into the PDF (see How to fill out a pdf file programmatically?) and then "flatten" it to an ordinary PDF (How to flatten a XFA PDF Form using iTextSharp?). The problem with this approach is that you need a software library or tool to achieve this, and other than Adobe LiveCycle and iText's XFA Worker, I don't know of any tool that can flatten XFA to ordinary PDF.
Using a PostScript driver to print a dynamic XFA form won't work because other than Adobe and iText software, there is very little support for XFA in the software world (and XFA is being deprecated in PDF 2.0).
Can the Macbook and the Linux machine be networked? If so, try to share the printer, and fill out and print the form using Acrobat Reader DC on the Macbook (or Adobe Reader XI).
An other possibility would be setting up a PostScript printer (driver) and use its help to create a PostScript file which you then could transfer to the Linux machine and send to the printer (maybe with Ghostscript as an intermediary).
The crucial point is that you will need Acrobat/Reader to fill out the form, particularly if it is a dynamic XFA.
We have a program which produces PDFs by merging data in FDF files with PDF 'template' and then flattening the form fields to create a final PDF document. Not a problem with CutePDF except for one thing...
One of the templates has a calculated date field that is set by a small bit of Javascript when the PDF is updated. However CutePDF doesn't support Javascript in PDF documents.
I've looked into other products but it's very rare for the feature list to actually mention wether or not the APi supports Javascript calculated fields.
Does anyone know of an API or SDK which allows for merging FDFs into PDFs and also supports Javascript calculated fields?
Results of my own investigation:
CutePDF: Merges FDF to PDF but does not support calculated fields
Debenu Quick PDF Library: Neither FDF nor calculated fields
PDF-XChange Viewer Pro: Supports Javascript but not FDF, very helpful support though
PDFExpress: Supports XFDF (annotations only) but not FDF
Adobe PDF Library (via Datalogics): competely incomprehensible and doesn't support either option
Adobe PDF Library (via Adobe): no answer to enquiry
I need to create PDF forms which can be used to take input from the user. They need to contain drop down boxes and text boxes. Please suggest which software or tool will best suit my purpose
You can use IText to edit PDFs and add forms. I saw a really cool demo of their new XFA features (http://lowagie.com/img/summit2012/summit2.pdf)
First of all, software recommendations have meanwhile become off-topic on stack overflow, different stack exchange sites for that have been established since then.
That been said, the question itself is not very exact. There actually are two major form technologies in use in PDFs: AcroForm forms and XFA forms.
AcroForm forms are the original PDF forms technology conclusively specified in the PDF specification ISO 32000-1 (soon to be updated by part 2). This technology only allows static forms, i.e. forms for which the number and positions of fields is already fixed at form definition time. (Actually there is a dynamic sub-feature of this technology, page templates which fields, which allows you to add extra pages with their own fields, but this feature is hardly ever used.)
Creating and filling this kind of forms nowadays is possible using a wide selection of options, desktop applications (Adobe's Acrobat being just one among many), web applications, and general purpose PDF libraries for many languages or platforms. A quick search on google can show you many options...
Displaying this kind of forms is possible on many PDF viewers, editing them visually at least on numerous of them.
XFA (XML Forms Architecture) forms are an alternative forms technology introduced by Adobe which is referenced by the PDF specification (part 1) but which has remained in the Adobe legacy domain. This technology actually uses PDF files merely as transport medium, the XML definitions of XFA forms define forms in a way that is independent of PDF as such. XFA forms can be dynamic (e.g. they can contain tables with variable number of columns), their form elements can grow and move later elements.
Creating and filling this kind of forms is possible using only a small selection of options, foremost Adobe desktop and server products and very few alternative solutions.
Displaying this kind of forms is possible only on Adobe products and a very small selection of other products, and depending on the version of the Adobe PDF viewer a digital signature by a Adobe private key might be required for non-trivial use of such forms.
Support for XFA forms will become deprecated in the ISO 32000-2 specification. Thus, using them in new projects might not be the best idea.
If you are targeting Windows OSes and a commercial tool is an option for you, you can try with Amyuni PDF Creator (there are ActiveX and .Net versions). It will allow you to design your PDF form graphically with a PDF editor application, and you will be able to manipulate the resulting files programmatically. You can also create a new form programmatically if needed.
Usual disclaimer applies.
I need to develop a service able to convert MS Office and Open Office documents to PDF. And the PDF`s also need to be commentable when opened in ADOBE Reader.
I have used a piece of software from www.neevia.com. And it does the conversion, but is not able to make the PDF´s commentable and is therefore useless in my scenario.
Ideally I would like a piece of software that is monitoring a directory, and when a file is commited to that directory, the software detects this, fetches the file, converts it, and puts it in another directory. This way I can programmatically put the file I want converted in the IN folder and monitor the OUT folder to fetch the file when converted.
So do anyone know a piece of software capable of converting MS Office and Open Office files to commentable PDF`s?
It sounds like you're after the "Extend Features In Acrobat Reader" document rights feature that's part of Acrobat Professional. If you want a programmatic way of doing it then Adobe LiveCycle is the only game in town. This is one of the features that Adobe keeps for itself and no third party is legally allowed to provide it.
You could programmatically, using office automation, print documents to a postscript printer driver to get a postscript file, then use GhostScript to convert the PS file to PDF. Not sure of the commentable features supported by Adobe Reader as opposed to the full version of Acrobat, but it should create a reasonably well supported PDF file.
A-PDF may do what you want, it's web site claims it can convert office docs into PDF including batch convertion with watching a folder.
Both Office 2007 and OpenOffice can save directly to PDF, so you could automate that process.
However, changing the "document rights" of the PDF to allow commenting is something that only Adobe Acrobat can do. (This is Adobe's way of selling more product). There are other 3rd-party tools out there that claim to be able to do it (google change pdf +"document rights"), but I can't vouch for any of them.
I believe the commentable features are part of the PDF software, and not the file. Adobe Professional will allow to add comments, while the reader has less capabilities.
Hmmm, you can develop your own or just buy it off the shelf. My company (shameless plug) has a product that does server based PDF Conversion for common Office formats and can be invoked via a web service.
Blogged about it here. Making office work reliably on the server (32bit/64bit, Win2K3/Win2K8) is challenging to say the least.
Im currently writing my bachelor thesis with latex and using TexnicCenter. I want to be able to send my generated pdf file to people and they should be able to write comments.
It seems like commenting is not allowed by default, how do I change this?
I am using straight to PDF with pdflatex and acrobat reader 9 to read and comment on the files
I think your problem is that acrobat reader doesn't allow commenting on documents not produced by abode approved products, which I don't think pdflatex would be.
You should look at the free PDF-XChange Viewer which allows you to comment and annotate the text. Its a portable windows app (download), so doesn't need to be installed on your (or the reviewers) machines.
In order to comment using the free Adobe Reader application, the document needs to be signed with a cryptographic key only available from Adobe's commercial (non-free, for-pay) software suites. Likewise, if one is using Adobe Acrobat (not the free Reader) to view a PDF document, commenting may be activated -- or so I hear. The idea here is that it takes some piece of commercial Adobe software in the scenario -- be it producer or consumer -- to make commenting possible.
There are other free PDF producer and consumer applications that allow some form of annotation, but none of them are equivalent to the "native" form offered by Adobe's products.
Strange... I just finished my master thesis, using TexnicCenter and the MikTeX distribution, and comments worked just fine. What build profile do you use? Straight to PDF with pdflatex, or via the PS->PDF route? You might want to try the pdflatex method.
(EDIT): ah, we used Acrobat Pro for commenting, so that's why it did work in our case... Thanks rsg!
You can download the 30 day trial of Acrobat Professional 9, and enable the user rights required on the pdf so that they can comment using Acrobat Reader.
I would definitely have a look at the LaTeX Web Companion. There is a whole section about generating PDF from LaTeX, including esoterica such as forms.