This is very helpful. Thanks. Thanks also to Troy. John
----- Original Message ----- From: "Alexander Zatko" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Multiple recipients of list witango-talk" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, September 26, 2002 5:41 PM Subject: RE: Witango-Talk: Creating pdf files > 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 ________________________________________________________________________ TO UNSUBSCRIBE: send a plain text/US ASCII email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe witango-talk in the message body
