Bruno Lowagie <bruno <at> lowagie.com> writes:

> 
> Gatewood, Paul (RSIS) wrote:
> > I have a "template" pdf with 5 pages.
> > 
> > The first 4 pages have "normal" form fields.  By calling them
> > "normal" I mean The runtime values for all such fields are all short
> > enough to fit within the corresponding fields.
> > 
> > Page 5 has 1 large form field, the value of which may need more
> > space than is available on page 5.  If this happens, the final
> > output PDF should contain additional pages (6, 7, etc.) with
> > whatever "overflow" text from this long text value did not fit on
> > page 5.
> > 
> > What I may not have made clear earlier is that page 5 of the
> > template, in addition the large form field, also contains some
> > "normal" form fields.  These appear at the top of most of the pages
> > of the template (including page 5).
> 
> OK, then maybe you should do it in two passes.
> First use PdfStamper to fill out and flatten all the fields
> EXCEPT the large one on page 5. Don't forget to retrieve
> the coordinates of the large field. Close the stamper.
> 
> Now you have a PDF template that is almost completely filled in
> (as described in chapter 2: this form doesn't need to be stored
> on the file system; it can be stored in memory as a byte array).
> Use this form to create a new PdfReader and PdfStamper object.
> Use the coordinates retrieved earlier to add the content on
> page 5. The rest is similar to what you're already doing now,
> with as main difference that the 'normal' fields on page 5 are
> no longer acrofields, but real content (and part of the imported
> page).
> 
> An alternative might be to add all the fields on page 5
> the same way you're adding the large field. However I think
> this will take more processing time and result in a slightly
> larger file size.
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------


Thanks Bruno -- I will try the approach of stamping the fields on page 5 during
the first pass, so the "normal" field values have already been filled out when I
later import page 5 for the overflow of the large field.

If (when!) I get this working, another thing I will need to do is add "page X of
Y" information to each page.  In the past, this was hard-coded in the template,
as the final documents were always 5 pages long.  Now, of course, this needs to
be dynamic.

I will use the examples in Ch. 14 as well as search this list for help on this,
but if you have any recommendations, based on this particular situation, I would
be grateful.



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