My first tutorial on XML schemas explained how to connect your form to a schema however it did not show some of the Data View palette’s special features with respect to metadata in XML schemas.
Using metadata based on a combination of the XML Schema appInfo and Dublin Core title and description elements, you can influence how the Data Connection Wizard creates fields you drag and drop from the data connection tree into your form. You can also direct the Data View palette to show some of this information in the Schema Data Connection Tree that it displays.
We have been hard at work on our Solution Accelerator lab (filter by Speaker and choose my name, “Cameron, Stefan”). Now that the content is coming together, there have been a few changes which I thought I should mention in light of my previous post.
In order to ensure the lab is successful in the short amount of time we have (90 minutes) to build a small end-to-end solution, the Content Creation (CCR) and Correspondence Generation (CGR) building blocks will no longer be featured. Instead, we will feature the following building blocks, which should give you a taste for their power to accelerate your own solutions:
Selection and Capture (SNC) — capture data and guide users through filling specific forms within a given set;
On-Demand Assembly (ODA) — automate the creation of a PDF package, a single PDF document containing a copy of submitted forms and other appropriate documentation.
In the mean time, here’s some fun MAX trivia. You never know when it might come in handy…
I have been hard at training for a half marathon since I last ran in the Ottawa Race Weekend (OK, I took a week off after that race, but don’t tell anyone!) I had been targeting the Fall Colours run since it’s a good course, not too crowded, the temperature is usually just perfect (starts-out around 9C/48F and warms-up to around 14C/57F) and the leafs have turned to gorgeous colours on Canadian Thanksgiving weekend.
This year, however, I’ll be attending the Adobe MAX 2009 Conference the week prior to that race so I decided to set my sights on the second annual Army Run. It would be dangerous to plan to run right after a business trip since I don’t know what shape I’ll be in when I return.
My goal is still to break 1 hour 30 minutes for my half marathon time. I usually don’t attempt to raise funds for the races I do but the Army Run is in support of injured soldiers and military families from the Canadian Army which I think deserves our support. If you would like to sponsor me for this event to help raise some funds (which go directly to the organizations, not myself), here’s the link:
Posted by Stefan Cameron on August 24th, 2009 Filed under General
I regularly use the saveXML() method, available on all node class-based objects, as a way to debug my forms (think of it as a type of introspection technique). The method outputs a string representation of the XML content of the node in question, which helps when attempting to discover the underlying object structure without a debugger…
For example, say you have a simple form with a text field and a numeric field. The following statement will output the form’s data to the JavaScript Console in Acrobat:
Though I had been using saveXML() for quite some time, I hadn’t realized that it actually takes an optional parameter, a string with a value of “pretty”, that results in much nicer output.
Steve, on the LC Designer Team, has posted a good introduction to LC Designer ES2‘s Action Builder feature. This feature is going to be very useful, especially if you’re not comfortable with writing scripts and need to get some basic but powerful logic to function properly. Actions will take care of it all for you so that you don’t have to write a line of code!
Check-out more posts on Actions and the Action Builder feature:
Aug 10, 2009 — Added links to more Action Builder posts from the LC Designer Team. Aug 31, 2009 — Added links to more Action Builder posts from the LC Designer Team.
Posted by Stefan Cameron on August 6th, 2009 Filed under Designer,Scripting
