🙂 let's go through this one by one....
Edit->Lock has nothing to do with the later PDF running in Adobe Acrobat/Reader and will not make anything better at runtime. It is a help to forms designers to prevent them from accidentally changing the wrong field or other objects.
Importing a PDF form created by something else is allowing you to get a headstart with the XFA based form. But it usually is not the best way of having a form as it often does not use the native XFA mechanisms. Not sure if the quirky exit script comes from the import. When I put a message box at the beginning I can see that the exit event fires even on TAB! Do you also have code in the lvStart field?
Looking at your script I try to summarize what I think you want to achieve here:
You have 2 fields, a startdate and an enddate. When the user enters the startdate and the enddate you want to make sure that the enddate is after the start and not before?
Using setFocus(this) is to force the cursor back again?
You should not use xfa.host.validationsEnabled. It covers the whole form. you can set the validation speciifically for each field and turn off the need for nullTest individually.
this.execValidate() should not be used in this way. The validation event fires with every field.
If I got your use case right then I can put together a simple sample using best practice in the form.
Otherwise explain a bit more what you want to achieve in your form.
You must not read 768 pages but a little bit of familiarization could be helpful 😉
Kosta