Quoting "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:

> I have a Java Swing application that I would like to
> adapt for generating tax forms in pdf format (or
> simply be able to programmatically  fill out such
> "fillable" forms which are available from the
> Internal Revenue Service, www.irs.gov).

So you have all the data, but you want to put the
data on specific locations on an existing form?
Then you should try to find out the X-Y positions
of the 'blanks', copy the pages of the existing
form and write the data over the imported pages
at specific locations (see the tutorial).

> In other words, once tax related information is
> collected, a relevant tax form in pdf format would
> be generated/filled out by this application. What
> can you recommend?

If you don't have the existing PDF, you could do
what I did for the University. I have an XML document
with different clauses and some tags like this <student />.
For each document (one per student) I parse the XML
with a different TagMap (in my case a HashMap-object,
not an XML file). In this tagmap, I use IGNORE for
all the clauses that do not apply and I set the content
of the <student /> tags to the name of the actual student.

A disadvantage of the first approach (filling in blanks
on an existing PDF) is the fact that you are limited
in the amount of data you can add in the blanks.
You should use this only if the data has a standardized
format.
A disadvantage of the second approach (XML) is the fact
that you can't control the layout very well. But in my
case, I need to add complete sentences with the past
studies of each student. For a freshman, nothing will
be added, for a doctorandus, several lines have to be
added. So I can't use a standardized form...

HTH,
Bruno


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