On 13/09/2012 2:23 PM, David Artman wrote: > Goal: Upon generating a PDF, checkboxes appear next to each paragraph of > a particular type, aligned right against the page margin. Can not use > autonumbering, because the paragraph tag already has numbers. Can not > manually create them in the PDF post-distillation, because we're talking > about hundred of steps needing checkboxes--WAY too time-consuming. > > I am currently considering this method, using only FM 8 and Acrobat 9 > Pro: > > 1) Manually place a checkbox glyph into a text frame within an anchor > frame that is set to "Run Into Paragraph" and aligned right. > 2) Add some kind of label within the text frame (e.g., "Y", "OK" or > "Done"). > 3) Copy-and-paste the anchor for that frame at then end of every a new > para of that type. > 4) Distill to PDF. > 5) Open PDF in AcroPro. > 6) Let the Form Wizard detect the labelled checkboxes and auto-create > them. > > Works, but error-prone in many ways: > > a) Writers forget to add the manually-placed frame. > b) TONS of other stuff can be detected as "form fields"; and their > auto-created fields have to be deleted (could be more work than adding > fields manually post-PDFing!). > > Ideas? I suspect there's a plug-in that will automatically do this, if > setup right initially (or will do it wherever a special type of marker > is placed--"half automatic" so to speak). > > Thanks in advance; > David Artman > david artman designs > _______________________________________________
I'm not familiar with the form wizard, so can't deal with that; but there are ways to put in a checkbox glyph without messing up your autonumbering. Turn on room for sideheads on the right side of your text frames. Create a pgf tag with Side Head-Alignment at First Baseline and an autonumber with your checkbox glyph. Set the Next Pgf Tag to your numbered step. You might be able to do something similar with a tag defined as a right-aligned Run-In Head. You could also use a 2-column borderless table with the right-hand column cells formatted with the pgf tag I described first and the left-hand column cells formatted with your numbered step tag; updating the table definition would preserve that formatting in tables inserted subsequently. And if you care to delve into pdfmarks, I think you could use postscript frames containing pdfmark code to create checkboxes. You can find info about this here: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/acrobat.html HTH, -- Stuart Rogers Technical Communicator Phoenix Geophysics Limited 3781 Victoria Park Avenue, Unit 3 Toronto, ON, Canada M1W 3K5 +1 (416) 491-7340 x 325 http://www.phoenix-geophysics.com
