Hi
We actually want to use a Static Image rather than an ImageField – but we want some javascript to load a particular image on init or form:ready, rather than always having it use the same field. Is there any way of achieving this?

Many thanks,
Howard

I have a question regarding Image Fields. I am a minimal user, no knowledge of any scripting. I created a form with upwards of 6 Image Fields. Each picture is a different-size rectangular “icon” for a particular task students must complete. My problem is that the image ALWAYS left aligns and because the icons are different sizes, I can use any of the other options except “Scale Image to Fit”. Let me know if there is any quick and easy way to make this happen. (I have asked my husband–a programmer–who had no answer to give me.)

Melissa,

I’m not certain I completely understand your problem. Are you saying you’re unable to use the “Scale Image to Fit Rectangle” option because your icons are all different sizes?

It sounds to me like you should be using the “Use Original Size” option and aligning the images on the grid using the alignment buttons on the toolbar up top rather than trying to apply different paragraph formatting to the image fields.

Also, you should probably be using image objects (“Image” as opposed to “Image Field”) instead of image fields because image fields, by nature, let you click on them to load-in other images when viewing the form in Acrobat. Image objects, however, don’t do this because they’re meant to be “read-only” or unchangeable.

The simple test form I used had saved (by default) as “Acrobat 7 Static”. I tested it again after saving it as “Acrobat 7 Dynamic” and see the same behavior. As I look again at my form I realize that my text field only partially overlaps my image field. If I select a new image then it is rendered in a way that obscures my text field, but clicking on the portion of the text field that does not overlap the image field causes the entire text field to be raised on top of the image. I tried this again with Designer 7 and Reader 7 and the behavior is the same.

BTW, I tried the static image tip that you described. While it does work I found unpredictable (or perhaps just complex) and undesirable interaction with the display of other fields. Changing the visibility of overlapping static images would cause other image fields to “loose” or hide their image. I would have to go back an click the image field to “raise” it.

Finally, I’ve noticed that the new support for transparent PNGs only works in the “GUI”, but does not work properly when printing to PDF. I’m not sure how to report this bug.

Hi Stefan
(This is going back to one of the very early postings on this topic…)
The reason that we want to use an Image rather than an ImageField isn’t because of captions or use-clicks. It’s because a) we specifically want the image to act like a background behind the form fields (it’s actually a map, overlaid with form objects), and b) there are around 5000 images – we don’t want to have to develop a separate form for each image. The idea is to import some form data, one bit of which is the name of the image, which then gets loaded.

By the way, I totally don’t buy you saying that this isn’t a bug. At the very least, it’s the absence of a feature. Your explanation of why it doesn’t work is an excellent explanation – but that’s what it is – an explanation. Explaining why something is so doesn’t detract from the fact that the product doesn’t do something that customers want it to do… :-$

Many thanks for your patient responses and excellent explanations.

Howard

Hi Stefan,

Is there any way of embedding an image loaded at runtime into an ImageField into a pdf document, for delivery purposes?.

Stefan,

Thanks for your soon reply. Yes, it is right, I understand the concept. But let me explain you what I want to do.
We develop a software that integrates Acrobat Reader inside. We open a customer and we want to generate a form with personal information embedded on it (name, address, …) including his photo (all this information comes from our software and we pass thru xml to the form, we pass the photo as a path to a temporary image file). We save the form asociated to the customer in a pdf in an appropriate directory and we want to delete the temporary information (we want to delete the photo), but the photo must be maintained (embedded) into the pdf, because we want to deliver by email the pdf.
Conclusion, we want to use dynamic loading images and have the possibility (programatically) to embed the images before saving the final pdf filled.
I hope this information help you to understand my problem.
Note: Sorry for my english.

hai

i am new to this field so can u

tell how to set image to a

particular field. Please send

quickly its very urgent.

I think this question was asked already, but not directly answered: I’ve inserted an image field with Scale Image Porportionally sizing and can’t get it to vertically center the image. So when I click the image in Preview, it defaults it to the horizontal center and vertical top. I want it to be positioned at the vertical center. It seems like setting the Anchor to middleCenter could fix the problem, but that option is greyed out. Any ideas? I feel like I’m missing something obvious.

Hello Stefan,

Since you seem to be the PDF generation guru I really need some help 🙂 We have a flex based app that is serving up some PDFs. Basically these are typical form letters and we have some java code that inserts data from our DB via XML. One of the items we need to have included is an image of the users signature. We kinda have this working but it seems very hit or miss and we need to find out the proper way to do this. Most users get a message from Acrobat asking for permission to link to external data (the image coming in via the URL). This has caused enormous issues as most users are just so accustomed to denying access that they cause the image not to load. After that the image never loads for these users. Is there a way to have the image sent just like the rest of the XML data (ie. not as an external URL link)? We would like it somehow embedded in the file. Obviously this data changes from user to user so can’t just be put in the letter itself as part of the template. I am really a nubbie with regards to created these PDF XML templates so the more detail you could give the better. Thanks so much for your time.

Hi there,

i have been searching for a solution some time now and i think this is the most proper place to find it. So, here it goes:

I need to display an image dynamically. I understand that the Image Field will be used but i think that i lack the proper script.
I tried with [i]this.value.image.href[/i] but i did not get any results. The images are displayed only when i insert the path in the
URL field… Most of the images that i want to display are in a local network.

Do you have any suggestions ?

Thank you in advance!

By the way Stefan, congrats for the great job you have achieved in here!

Alex Kel,

Actually, there’s another way around this issue which is to create a web service that returns the image bytes (as a base64-encoded string). You can bind that data string to an image field to get the image to display. This is OK since it’s bytes, not an external reference (URL).

Karl Sigiscar,

The image bits should be Base64-encoded when they’re merged into the form. When you look at the XML Source in Designer, what you see is UTF-8 encoded so it’s possible you’re seeing UTF-8-encoded Base64-encoded strings — that’s all I can think of at the moment.

I’ve written Flex apps that do similar things to what you’re trying to do (Flex app selects images and they’re then transferred to the PDF as image data) and it has worked so it makes me suspect there’s something wrong with the PDFService remote object.

I would suggest you use your Flex app to generate the XML data, save it to an XML file then set that file as the “preview data file” in Designer (“File menu > Form Properties > Preview tab”) and preview the PDF within Designer. If your Flex app is producing the correct data, you should see your images in the PDF at this point. If you do, then the image data is being corrupted somewhere between the Flex app and the PDF (possibly by the PDFService remote object).

Shirley,

You should be able to remove the image by setting the image field’s “rawValue” property to “null”:

myImageField.rawValue = null;

You could put that code in a button’s Click event and label the button “Clear Image”, for example.

Hi Stefan,

I figured it out by myself. In the layout-tab the image field was set to rescale to fit content. Now it works fine.

Cheerio
Tobias

simon,

I’m afraid I don’t know the answer to that question.

Cris,

It’s possible to center a picture within an image or image field object. The problem is that Designer doesn’t make it easy for you to do so.

No matter what you set the “Object palette > Draw/Field > Sizing property” to, Designer will always insist that the image/field be the same size as the picture it contains and the Paragraph palette isn’t available (is disabled) for image/field objects. This behaviour means you can’t easily center pictures.

What you need to be able to do is set the width/height of the image/field to be larger/taller than the picture it contains and then be able to set paragraph alignment properties to align the picture horizontally/vertically.

By going to the XML Source view, you can change the “w” and/or “h” properties of the image/field to match those of the other fields and then paste the following line into the <draw> (for an image object) or <field> (for an image field), which will cause the image/field’s content (the picture) to be centered both vertically and horizontally:

<para vAlign="middle" hAlign="center"/>

@Hitesh,

You could try an Exit script (on the image field that the user will use to upload the image) that retrieves the rendered dimensions of the image field — provided the image field is set to “size to content” (otherwise, the rendered dimensions of the field won’t match the actual pixels). In the Exit script, you can use the “xfa.layout.w(fieldRef, units)” and “xfa.layout.h(fieldRef, units)” methods to get the dimensions of the image field:

// JavaScript:
var width = xfa.layout.w(this, "pt");
var height = xfa.layout.h(this, "pt");

The script above will get the width and height in points, which should be the equivalent in pixels.

I apologize in advance if this question is inappropriate for this thread, but can’t seem to find a CONTACT US link or thread on this subject anywhere.

I’m creating a form using Acrobat 7 and want to validate that one field’s entry matches another, specifically as in a “reconfirm e-mail address” or “reconfirm password” entry situation.

@Peter Donoso,

To compare two field values, compare their rawValue properties. For example, in a button’s Click event, you would do

// JavaScript
if (PasswordField.rawValue != ConfirmField.rawValue)
    xfa.host.messageBox("The passwords do not match!");

which would display an alert message if the password and confirmation fields do not match.

@David Todd,

You’re welcome!

I’m saying that’s the behaviour I observed in Acrobat 9.3.3 with certain annotations like rectangle. I don’t know if that’s the expected behaviour. I will confirm with my colleagues and update here.

@David Todd,

I have confirmed that the behaviour I saw is “the way things are” at present. That is, displaying annotations above image fields isn’t directly supported (which explains what I described earlier) but displaying them atop static images should work.

I encourage you to log a feature request for this so that the Acrobat Team can consider it for a future release. It will help to know there’s a real customer use case out there for the feature.

In the mean time, you might be able to work around the issue by using both a static image and an image field in tandem: You could show the image field in thumbnail size (i.e. quite small) and, when the user sets an image, you can set the static image’s “bits” to be a copy of the bits in the image field. Of course the static image would be large enough to comment on…

Another alternative is to flatten the PDF once the image is loaded into the image field by printing the form using the Adobe PDF Printer. That will generate a flattened version of the PDF which is a “pure PDF” without any notion of a form behind it. You should be able to comment atop the image at this point. The drawback is that you can’t change the image anymore.

Finally, thanks for pointing-out the “unchangeable protected image field” issue. I will pass this along to the Designer Team.