There are quite a few proprietary and free solutions that can generate PDF files out there (xml.org, sourceforge.org). The simplest thing you can do is to prepare a non-compressed PDF file that you open in a text editor and replace text objects that will be variable with something like @@local$text1 @@local$text2 .... @@local$textN. In your witango code read this modified PDF (template) from disk or DB (wherever you have saved it) and display it in one of the result actions following the read action. If you have variables (text1 - textN) around at that time having values assigned from the web form post arguments, the template will get "instantiated" with those values. Create an assignement action right after that where you assign the PDF instance into a new variable <@ASSIGN local$instance VALUE="<@RESULTS>">. Then <@PURGERESULTS>, to clear the accumulated results that are not needed any more. If you need to write the instantiated PDF into disk in order to email it as an attachment, you can do the population directly in the file action results pane.
Some problems with this hack: 1) text will be left justified by default (for example, PDF spec does not understand concept of "centering") 2) new text might overlap other elements on the page 3) the newly-generated PDF will have it's cross-reference table irrepairable by Acrobat. This issue is related to the fact that every object's position in the PDF file is recorded in a cross-reference table (usually found at the end of the file) in form of a byte offset and when you change one text string, position of that string and all the following ones will be incorrect in the CR table. This one might be a showstopper, so I would recommend you to first open a sample PDF file and manually overwrite the text strings that your program would populate and see whether Acrobat can open thus modified file. I hope this helps some. A. > -----Original Message----- > From: Troy Sosamon [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: Thursday, September 26, 2002 5:03 PM > To: Multiple recipients of list witango-talk > Subject: RE: Witango-Talk: Creating pdf files > > > This sounds interesting. You might need to call Adobe Tech > Support, but I > found this on their web site. > > http://adobedoc.kanisasolution.com/Acrobat5/c09pf38.htm > > ===== Original Message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] at > 9/26/02 6:36 am > >Hi all, > > > >I have been asked to the take input of a long form, insert > the values into a > >pdf template, and send the merged pdf to someone via email. > I think I have > >seen posts here indicating that this is possible. > > > >Can anyone tell me the basic steps for creating the merged pdf file? > >Thanks. > > > >John > > > >_____________________________________________________________ > ___________ > >TO UNSUBSCRIBE: send a plain text/US ASCII email to > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > with unsubscribe witango-talk in the message body > > ______________________________________________________________ > __________ > TO UNSUBSCRIBE: send a plain text/US ASCII email to > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > with unsubscribe witango-talk in the message body > ________________________________________________________________________ TO UNSUBSCRIBE: send a plain text/US ASCII email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe witango-talk in the message body
