Tek-Tips is the largest IT community on the Internet today!

Members share and learn making Tek-Tips Forums the best source of peer-reviewed technical information on the Internet!

  • Congratulations Chris Miller on being selected by the Tek-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!

Converting text into forms?

Status
Not open for further replies.

DrAnomaly

Programmer
Jul 22, 2004
3
US
Is there a simple (hopefully automated) way to turn lines of pre-existing text in a .PDF document into text boxes that someone using Acrobat Reader can enter information into? I have Acrobat 5.0x and FoxIt's PDF Editor.

What I want to do is this:

I have a .pdf document that has a number of ID cards with pre-entered names. Just using them myself, I'd simply edit them with Acrobat and print them with the new names and information. The situation has gotten to the point where other people need to be able to do this, and most of them don't have (or don't have access to) Acrobat, just Acrobat Reader.

I know you can create .pdf forms using Acrobat that Acrobat Reader can enter the information in and then print; the reason I don't want to have to go back and manually create and place a text box for each entry on the card is that each card has 14 fields, and they're laid out 8 cards per 8.5 x 11 page. That's a LOT of fields to have to go back and manually create, and getting the placement right would be a real chore. That's why I'm hoping there's some way to select a line of text and then convert it *in place* to an editable form field (probably already containing the "sample" information) that could be changed by someone with access to just Reader.
 
I haven't seen such a tool. You'd have to write a program to do this. Your "profile" says you're a programmer, what languages do you use?

I know Adobe "sells" a forms toolkit (you have to join their developer organization). But the key is to hook into exisiting page elements and know their location. I don't think their APIs are robust enough for that.



Thomas D. Greer
Providing PostScript & PDF
Training, Development & Consulting
 
My preferred language is C/C++, but I can also do Java, VB, and just about any scripting language if I have a decent reference book handy. I've never done a 'plug-in' style tool for an app I didn't write myself; maybe it's time to start.
 
Yep, Adobe is plugin-centric. Their APIs into the PDF document are very weak, but their plugin API is evidently quite strong.



Thomas D. Greer
Providing PostScript & PDF
Training, Development & Consulting
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Part and Inventory Search

Sponsor

Back
Top