PDF-Forms is a service provided by PDFzone.com | http://www.pdfzone.com/ __________________________________________________________________
The confusion is actually somewhere else.
Acrobat Elements is (as it has been discussed earlier here on pdfzone.com and on PlanetPDF) a package for big companies.
Acrobat Elements contains the following pieces:
• Adobe Reader 6 (I guess if you buy now, you get 6.01)
• a "headless" Distiller (headless means that it has no way to be configured; the only thing the users can select is the job options, but they can not modify them.
• the pdfmaker macros for MS-Word and MS-Excel
THAT'S IT.
Acrobat Elements has nothing to do with forms filling (except what you can do with Reader anyway). Acrobat Elements has (as it seems to me) been created to counter the JAWS PDFCreator product by Global Graphics.
On the other hand, Approval was originally created as a pseudo successor of the killed-off Business Tools, and aimed at the corporate market. It was also part of some of the IRS Tax forms CDs in the past (which means that the USAn IRS has shelled out quite a lot of dough to Adobe...).
There is indeed a question on who actually has to pay for some functionality of a form. Is it the end user, or is it the forms owner/issuer? In a G2C (Government to citizen) environment, it is pretty much clear that it is the issuer of the form. And this is the case in most scenarios I can see, because the capability to securely/legally binding sending back the form (or the data) saves the issuer a lot of money. One of the most expensive parts in a complete forms workflow is manual data capturing, which is also the biggest source of errors introduced within the workflow. Therefore, that is something which must be avoided as much as possible. This also means that those prices floating around for "extended rights" are absolutely reasonable ... if considered around the overall workflow ... and not only for big government agencies.
Hope, this can help.
Max Wyss PRODOK Engineering Low Paper workflows, Smart documents, PDF forms CH-8906 Bonstetten, Switzerland
Fax: +41 1 700 20 37 or +1 815 425 6566 e-mail: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.prodok.com
[ Building Bridges for Information ]
PS. please try to avoid HTML posting to a mailing list ... Thanks a lot.
______________________
Shameless Plug:
My next conference appearances and workshops:
• Conference presentations at the 2004 Symposium of the BFMA, May 23 to 27 in Reno, Nevada (http://www.bfma.org) and pre-/post-conference workshop, May 22/23 and 27, organized by essociates Group (http://www.essociatesgroup.com/AdvancedAcrobatForms.htm)
• And, as always, available for on-site workshops/tutorials/consulting.
_________________________
I think there's some confusion, here.
Acrobat Elements is a new concept/product (with version 6). It is listed on the Adobe "Acrobat" page. One must purchase 1,000+ units. This software does more than fill in a form:
Adobe® Acrobat® Elements 6.0 software enables enterprises to extend the value of their Microsoft Office investment by standardizing on Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) for reliable document distribution.
<image.tiff>Convert documents easily to Adobe PDF
<image.tiff>Enable reliable document distribution
<image.tiff>Preserve document integrity
<image.tiff>Extend your software investment
Acrobat Approval was discontinued (or appears to have been discontinued) with version 5. It is not listed on the "Acrobat" web page, but it is listed in the Adobe store. Single downloads are $39.00. Adobe probably determined that users weren't going to pay $39.00 for the privilege of completing someone else's form.
The concept now appears to be to get the maker of the form to fork over the money to pay for users to complete the forms. At several thousand dollars a form, it's priced out of my league.
To change your subscription: http://www.pdfzone.com/discussions/lists-pdfforms.html
