Stefan Cameron on Forms
Building intelligent forms using Adobe LiveCycle Designer

'FormCalc' Category Archive

PDF Forms Bible Review

1

PDF Forms Using Acrobat and LiveCycle Designer Bible

Last February, I announced the release of a new Designer book titled, “PDF Forms Using Acrobat and LiveCycle Designer Bible”.

Over the past few months, I had the opportunity to review it and I thought I would share my comments, with respect to the second-half of the book, which deals with LiveCycle Designer ES and XFA forms, to help you decide if it would be a good book for you*. (The first-half deals with authoring PDF forms, a.k.a. AcroForms, in Acrobat and is beyond the scope of my blog.)

Pros:

  • explains the licensing agreement involved when enabling forms for Reader using Acrobat’s “Extend Features in Adobe Reader” feature (p. 268) — this is a frequently-used feature however its governing licensing agreement, seldom understood, is explained here in “plain English”;
  • presents and reasons through different design approaches for a particular solution, helping the reader make an informed decision on the best course of action;
  • anything and everything you could possibly want to know is dealt with in some way;
  • lots of important, time-saving insights in the inline ‘notes’;
  • something for everyone from beginner to advanced;
  • many cross-references between various topics, making it very easy to start in any chapter and still find all the information you need.

Caution:

  • risk of “information overload” — use this book as reference since it’s not a light read, though their goal is simply to present a myriad of options and let you pick the one that best suits your needs.

Overview of Topics Covered:

  • all about tables (from simple layouts to advanced);
  • data merging with bindings;
  • Designer user interface details and lots of tips and tricks for accelerating form layout tasks;
  • working with static forms (with PDF backgrounds) and dynamic forms, highlighting the differences;
  • great details on all sorts of pagination options;
  • lots of detail on JavaScript and FormCalc, good scripting exercises with explanations, debugging tips, table with JavaScript and equivalent FormCalc functions to make it easy to script in either language if the other is more familiar to you;
  • form deployment options;
  • when and how to use data connections in your forms (XML, schema, database, web service) and setting data bindings;
  • great overview of LiveCycle ES, its components (e.g. LC Forms, LC Reader Extensions, LC Rights Management, LC Content Services, etc.) and what they do.

This book is available now on Amazon.com and Wiley.com and elsewhere.

* Please note that these opinions are not necessarily those of Adobe Systems Incorporated.

Posted by Stefan Cameron on November 13th, 2009
Filed under Acrobat, Data Binding, Designer, FormCalc, LiveCycle, Scripting, Tables

Connecting to a Schema

8

In previous tutorials, I have shown how to connect an XFA form to a database and a web service. Next on the list is the XML Schema (XSD).

If you work in an enterprise setting, chances are you may have already had to deal with corporate data schemas that define how that data is structured. The goal, when connecting a form to a schema, is to ensure that the data consumed and output by the form adheres to a specific structure. Any fields bound to data nodes that aren’t inside the schema space are basically ignored at time of submission.

Continue reading…

Posted by Stefan Cameron on August 3rd, 2009
Filed under Data Binding, Designer, FormCalc, Instance Manager, Tutorials, XFA

Expandable Table with Totals

93

It seems that calculating totals in an expandable table with a dynamic/repeatable row is a hot topic lately so I thought I would post a tutorial on how to build a simple table which represents a purchase order where you can add and remove line items and various totals are automatically calculated.

Before we get started, you’ll need Designer 7.1 and Acrobat/Reader 7.0.5 at minimum to run through this tutorial. I will be using Designer 8.2 and Acrobat/Reader 9.0 to do the tutorial so it’s possible some of the UI may have changed slightly since the 7.1/7.05 versions.

Continue reading…

Posted by Stefan Cameron on February 25th, 2009
Filed under Data Binding, Designer, FormCalc, Scripting, Tables, Tutorials, XFA

Adobe LiveCycle ES Update 1 Documentation

0

Since the release of Designer ES 8.2 and now LiveCycle ES Update 1, the documentation page has been updated with all sorts of goodies related to Update 1, including the following Designer-related documentation:

  • Scripting Reference (technical document about scripting your forms)
  • Target Version Reference (if you want to know what features are compatible with specific PDF versions or if you’re using Designer ES 8.2 to build a form for users on Acrobat/Reader 7.x and you want to make sure they can use your form)
  • Scripting Errors Reference (solutions to common scripting errors)
  • FormCalc Reference (for those of you who like to use FormCalc instead of JavaScript, this reference includes previously-omitted information about various language constructs such as “while”, “for” and “for each” loops)
Posted by Stefan Cameron on July 21st, 2008
Filed under Designer, FormCalc, Scripting

LC Designer ES Documentation Now Online

0

Adobe recently published a whole collection of documents for Designer. In particular, Designer documentation is now available online via LiveDocs.

Under the Develop Tab, you’ll find documentation on the following topics as they pertain to Designer:

  • Designer Help (LiveDocs)
  • Form Guides (“getting started” guide)
  • Scripting Basics
  • Scripting Reference
  • Target Version Reference (to know what features of XFA and Designer are supported in specific versions of Acrobat — this is what the new Target Validation feature in Designer is intended to help you manage)
  • Transformation Reference (to know what’s supported if you’re targeting HTML)
  • FormCalc Reference
Posted by Stefan Cameron on June 25th, 2007
Filed under Designer, FormCalc, Scripting, Tutorials