Stefan – Wondering if you’ve heard of this problem and know of a fix….
When I open/use my Designer, my screen does this fade-in/fade-out loading thing. It does this for any step and change that I make – going from my Design view tab to my PDF Preview tab….just about anything I do, it seems to “refresh” the screen in this slow-fading way. It’s EXTREMELY time consuming and slows up my work. I’ve looked online and in the forums for a solution but can’t figure it out. What’s the deal??

I have the same issue. It is not a system performance problem – everything else runs fine and snappily. My machine happily runs multiple instances of Visual Studio 2008 / 2005, SQL Server test instances, VM’s and misc apps all together. LiveCycle cannot competently draw it’s cute fade-in/out running all by itself. Maybe it doesn’t like my video driver, but everything else does fine and all I want to do is turn the stupid effect off and get back to work.

Eric Horde,

I don’t think this is a bug. Please see my response to your comment on my Shading the caption, not the entire field article.

Brian,

This is a known bug in Designer 8.1 and should be fixed in Designer 8.2 (now released). It seems that it’s caused by the presence of text objects (a type of XFA node) in the referenced fragment. If such a node exists, some of the first-level nodes inside the reference will become “defined” in the referencing form. The result is that the order of the nodes inside the fragment reference is changed in the referencing form.

For example, if your fragment looks like this:

<subform>
    <field name="field1"/>
    <draw name="text1"/>
    <field name="field2"/>
</subform>

The node becomes defined in the referencing form and the fragment, from the referencing form, ends-up looking like this in the Hierarchy palette (the order on the Canvas may also change in the referenced fragment subform has a flowed layout):

+ subform
    - text1

Unfortunately, the only workaround I know of is to edit the XML Source and specify all of the first-level nodes that appear in the referenced fragment so that the order remains the same as the original. After you’ve done that, the referenced fragment will look like this in Hierarchy palette:

+ subform
    - field1
    - text1
    - field2

Because the nodes inside the referenced fragment are specified in the referencing form, Designer will allow you to select and edit them however make sure you don’t. Restrict your editing to the subform which is the fragment reference. Do not edit objects inside of it even if Designer now allows you to select them.

PS: I’ve updating the Adobe Forum thread you referenced. Thanks for pointing it out!

Also … On the Adobe go wish site (http://www.adobe.com/go/wish) there is not a specific product entry for LiveCycle Designer … there are options for Acrobat Pro OR “Designer”…

Is the Go/Wish site the best way to report LC Designer Bugs? And if so, which product option should we use?

Tim Goodman,

Thanks for letting me know you were able to resolve the issue. I agree: It’s way too easy to fall into the static vs dynamic PDF trap!

As for reporting bugs, the Adobe “Wish” site is the best way to do so and you should choose “Designer” from the product list when reporting LiveCycle Designer bugs. We monitor bugs reported via that page. I’ve also updated this page to clarify this process.

Zoe,

It’s probably the fact you’re going through LC Forms 7.2 that’s the problem. It wouldn’t support XFA 2.8 which is what you get when you target Reader 9. If you have to render through LC Forms 7.2, you’re likely restricted to targeting Reader 7.0.9 or earlier (I’m guessing here, I don’t know for sure).

Hi,
could you please clarify can we use leader subform with variable height? I mean leader subform which contains children with variable height – e.g. text fields with text that can go 1 line or 2 lines. I’ve noticed that in this case (dynamic leader’s height) problems with start position of overflowed content can occur (seems that position doesn’t depend on changes of leader’s height ).

Thanx

Alexander,

That’s right: Acrobat/Reader does not yet support flowed subforms (i.e. that vary in height) as leader or trailer subforms for various pagination features (overflow, conditional breaks, etc.).

Ah ha. I finally found the infamous
<?templateDesigner StyleID aped3?>
bug!!!

There were about 1.5 Million lines of these redundant, apparently useless processing instructions in the file! Go figure! This bug seems to have been around for awhile as well. Here’s a link to one workaround.

http://www.acrobatusers.com/forums/aucbb/viewtopic.php?id=16411

Haven’t tested my file save problem – but it sure has stopped Livecycle Designer from crashing on every other command…

Hi Stefan

I have a form that I made with Designer 8.05 where the user must answer a question, and I use “xfa.host.response” for that. But each time the answer contain accentuated characters (é, à, ç, etc.), these characters disapear when I want to copy the answer in a field. There is the same behavior with formcalc or with javascript.

I Wondering if you’ve heard of this problem.

There is no bug when the form is made with Acobat (8.1.2) to do the same thing.

Thanks

Hi Stefan,

I’m using the Referenced Objects () to achieve a common style shared across objects.
When comes to the point to create them as fragment, LC Designer will hit Runtime Error and then force to close.

So i wonder if it is possible to create prototype objects and make them as fragment? The reason I wanted to make them as fragment is to share across my forms…

Thanks in advanced!

Hi Stefan,

I’m using LC Designer 8.2.1.4029.1.523496.

Sorry for my late reply…

These are the steps I did:

1. Created 1 button object (id=”protoButton”) under Referenced objects.

2. Then, I created 2 buttons. Open XML source, and set their ‘use’ attribute to refer to the proto ID as below:
< field use=”#protoButton”

3. Back to Design View.

4. Go to Form hierarchy > Referenced Objects > protoButton, right click and create fragment

5. LC Designer then crashed…

Thanks for helping!

leia,

Thanks for specifying the steps to reproduce the crash. I was able to reproduce it in LC Designer 8.2 SP2 and will be reporting it to the team.

Also, objects will only appear inside the “Referenced Objects” node in the Hierarchy if they are “complete” form objects like fields, draws, subforms, etc. If you make a proto out of a <font> node, like I did in my previous reply, it won’t show-up in the Hierarchy (as you have also observed).

Is this a bug in LC Designer?

Step 1: Drag and drop a “Document signature field” in the MASTER PAGE of the form ( not in design view)

Step 2: Save the form as Dynamic XML form.

Step 3: Preview the form

Issue: The Signature field does not appear “ACTIVE” nor seen on the form. if you go over the are ayou had dropped the control the variable name will be shown – but cannot click it and load your disgital signature…

Is this a bug?: The form virtually does nothing..is this a bug or what is that I need to make this work. I cannot change the form to be static – since I load variable data on the form. but I need the header and footer of the form to be constant which is why I have put them in the MASTER PAGE.

Stefan–

This is not really a bug in LC Designer, but in how Adobe (both Reader and other versions) deal with forms. I continue to have people not able to open forms/deal with links in a “regular” pdf to a form. Is there a fix for this yet?

Thanks.

Thanks Stefan. I agree with you totally that Embdedding a signature field in the MASTER page is not allowed by principle. That is why the control does not show up in preview. Thank you so much for clarifying to me with the concept behind.

Nikkia Carter,

Those are interesting problems you have. Here are some thoughts:

1. Usually this works by setting the binding on both fields to the same schema data node. Another way of doing it is to set the binding on the master page field to “None” and then add script to its Initialize event and get the value from the related body page field (rather than the other way around since there will be multiple instances of the master field, one for every page that uses that master page).

2. This kind of pagination is tricky. Unfortunately, none of the pagination APIs really know about “sections”. They just give you the current page number or the total page count. If I were attempting to do it myself, I would use a hierarchy of subforms on the body pages to achieve it. I would have a section subform that is as big as one page which contains a page subform, again as big as one page, and then put the content inside the page subform. Both the section and page subforms would be set to repeat (or you could not allow the page subform to repeat but allow it to break across pages) such that you could achieve multiple sections, each with their own sets of pages. Then I would have a master page that has a field on it with script that uses the “xfa.layout.page(this)” call to determine the absolute page number of that master page field stringed into a call to “xfa.layout.pageContent(xfa.layout.page(this), ‘subform’, 0)” to get all of the body page subform content related to that master page instance. From there, I would build a “section/page” string based on the index numbers of the instances of the section and page subforms found on that page.

That’s quite complex so I posted a sample form that illustrates what I mean. Check-out the script on the master page field and look at how the section and page subforms are setup. Note that Acrobat/Reader 8.0 (XFA 2.5) is required for this sample to work since it has fixes to the xfa.layout pagination APIs.

Hey! Have another question, please. For some reason, the header which is set through the overflow header is only showing up on two pages. The Subform(page1) has 1.5-3 pages for my project. Even if I condense the Subform(page 1) to 2 pages, if it expands past the 2 pages, due to the size of the data each field is bound to, then the header will not show up on the pages past 2. Do you know how to make it put the headder on all pages no matter how many there are, please?

Peace and Blessings,
Nikki

Well, it just to be my stupidness or that “Help” neglected to mention that when you have multiple subforms (which I changed from flowed to positioned) on the “untitled Subform (page 1)” you need to set the overflow leader to the header for each subform that may overflow onto another page. (I blame the “Help” ;-P) So, anyway, no problem with that anymore. Still have the page number problem and a new problem with an extra page, which is blank, that I can’t seem to get rid of. I tried your solution but it is treating all of the subreports (aka the untitled Subform (page 1) that repeats when it is bound to a XML data file containing multiple subreports) as one whole report instead of sections. So I still get S1/P1 – S1/P64 instead of S1/P1 – S1/P3, S1/P1 – S1/P2, S1/P1 – S1/P4, etc… Anymore suggestions please? 🙂

Peace and Blessings,
Nikki

Did you noticed this problem too?

Some little example:
On a blank form you place two fields, “textfield1” and “text”.
Then you create a floating field within text and rename it to “textfield1”.
Now you set the binding of textfield1 to global and your form properties to dynamic.
Generally the text now should show the same value as you type in textfield1, but it doesn’t.
The function will only work, if you also place a second floating field somewhere into the form, where you use one of the defaults such a “current page number” or “current date/time”.

Here an example of the problem:
https://share.acrobat.com/adc/document.do?docid=10d97c2d-5dcf-45e1-9856-a837617ef31b

Marcus R.,

The reason why the floating field’s value isn’t updated in the text object when you remove the other floating field is because the other floating field (current page number) is causing a relayout on the form when the form is changed, thereby causing a relayout of the text object, thereby causing it to “grab” the text field’s new value.

If you remove the other floating field, you need to force the form to relayout after the text field’s value is changed by putting this statement in the field’s Exit event (for example):

xfa.layout.relayout();

This behaviour has been the same for a long time because floating fields weren’t originally designed to be interactive however, with Acrobat/Reader 9.1, the behaviour has changed such that the level of interactivity that you’re trying to achieve is supported (i.e. the text object will automatically be updated to contain the text field’s value if its value changes).

In order to get this behaviour, your form must target Acrobat/Reader 9.1. LiveCycle Designer ES2 can target A/R 9.1 but you might be able to activate A/R 9.1 behaviours by adding the following processing instruction into the <template> node in XML Source:

<?originalXFAVersion http://www.xfa.org/schema/xfa-template/3.0/?>

When the form is rendered in Acrobat/Reader, this processing instruction will tell it which behaviours to use. Form more on behaviours and compatibility settings, see this post.

I tried your solution but it is treating all of the subreports (aka the untitled Subform (page 1) that repeats when it is bound to a XML data file containing multiple subreports) as one whole report instead of sections. So I still get S1/P1 – S1/P64 instead of S1/P1 – S1/P3, S2/P1 – S2/P2, S3/P1 – S4/P4, etc… Actaully the section ends up being the whole document and the page numbers end up being the subsections. So the full document has S1 and page of the subsections say P1 then the next subsection’s pages all say P2 and so on. I know this is hard to visualize. I will talk to my boss on Monday to ask him if it will be ok to send the template to you with sample data. IF you are getting a understanding of what I’m saying, please let me know. Thanks for all your help!

Peace and Blessings,
Nikki

Ok. Sending it now. Thanks!

Peace and Blessings,
Nikki

Mr. Cameron I have just a question:
How can I use the “accessKey” property in a XFA-form?

As documented in the reference manual I tried

TextField1.accessKey = “a”;

in different scenarios, but it never worked.
I would like to use the method for a faster navigation thru my forms.

Any help is welcome.
Thanks Marcus

Thanks for letting me know.

@Radzmar,

Yes, this is a known issue with Designer 8.2. It was fixed in Designer 9.0.