Paraphrasing Rob...
1. With a regular PDF form, you can:
- submit the data (XML) via http (to a regular web application, implemented as a servlet or whatever)
- submit the data via email
2. With a regular PDF form using "Free Reader", you CANNOT:
- have your end users save a partially completed form
- invoke a web service from the form
- digitally sign the form, add comments, and another few restrictions.
3. LC Forms allows you to:
- prefill a form with data before it's gets sent to the user
- allow your end users to submit the form as PDF (rather than XML), and you can then extract the XML from the PDF
If you want to get around the restrictions of #2, you can either:
- get your end-users to purchase a copy of Acrobat
- Reader-Enable the form. Reader-enabling allows a form to behave as if it were inside Acrobat, even though it is really being displayed in Reader. (It's basically like buying a form-specific copy of Acrobat for all your end-users.)
Howard
http://www.avoka.com