End-user electronic forms

[csutton]

Hi everyone,

Trying to find out if anyone can recommend another product out there similar to Omniform that I can incorporate into my VB project. I currently use Formdocs, a great product in itself, but does not have a ActiveX interface (it is COM and runs in its own processes).

I have evaluated Omniform's Developer's Edition, but it seems to be pretty buggy.

Any suggestions on third party products that I could possibly incorporate into my own product? I'd like to supply the end user a tool they can create their own electronic forms, and have those forms open up within my software.

Thanks,
Chris

 

[NetGiant]

Wild suggestions that I don't know much about but may help you in your search ...

[ul]
[li]Adobe Acrobat can do forms and their viewer is an ActiveX component. Maybe you can automate their form processing.[/li]
[li]MS Word can also work with documents as forms.[/li]
[/ul]

The down side to both of those is that you *must* have the full versions of each of them so your cost just went up considerably.

Net_Giant

What fun is a technology if you can't crash the OS?

 

[csutton]

Thanks Net,

I didn't realize that Acrobat had an ActiveX. I'll check into it to see if one can control a PDF form at the field level.

Thanks,
Chris

 

[vb5prgrmr]

csutton, have you read FAQ222-2244 yet?

Unless adobe has created a new ocx I doubt very much you will be able to control a pdf form with the ocx NetGiant has suggested. Last I remember it was a reader only OCX. You may be able however to do by hook or crook I don't know as I have never tried.

However, 3rd party controls aside it seems to me that you are using a database. If so then you may be able to create your own customizable forms and save the data to a configuration table(s). There is some code on this site that shows how to drag and drop along with other code for resizing controls at runtime. With these little pieces of code and some OO thinking for the data access I believe you should be able to make your own runtime forms.

Then again if you can find an acceptable 3rd party control/suite you may be able to save yourself a bit of coding.

Good Luck and good reading of FAQ222-2244

 

[csutton]

Just curious, is there a reason you directed me to that FAQ?