A question about development of livecylcle forms

[Former Community Member]

Hello,  I have been asked to build complex static forms for a client of ours using Livecycle Designer version 8.2.  The forms are static (fixed field) forms that will not interact with users in any way.  We will be populating the form fields from a .NET api so there is no need for any kind of validation handling / submit buttons etc.   In that way the forms are relatively simple.

The problem I am running into is the desired form layout is complex and I am not sure about the most productive way to produce this layout.  The form a need to produce must exactly match the content of the attached file called "TheGoal.pdf".   Unfortunately this comes as some kind of read only image produced from a word template and I am unable to manipulate the layout when I import this into Livecycle designer.  The client wants me to create the form from scratch so they can have full control of the layout if changes are requested in future.

To get a start on this, I went through the tutorials that come with the product just so I could understand how the forms are built.  I have attached a pdf file called "MyAttempt.pdf" that shows my initial attempts with the first few fields in the desired layout ("TheGoal.pdf").

I have considered a number of approaches and, the only thing, that sort of works is draw all the boxes using rectangle objects and then dropping the required fields into the rectangles.  [Note: I have tried using tables and nested tables but I appear to be limited by the fact that tables only allow me to have a fixed number of columns and that nested tables always fille the entire cell of the parent table. ]

The problem I have run into right away is I am finding my current approach very labor intensive.   Any time I want to change anything like resizing a box I have to resize all of the other boxes on the form.   As the form grows in complexity I can see the whole thing becoming a maintenance nightmare.

In short my question is this:

What is the best approach for creating complex layouts like this?  As an html developer I have been used to using tables to handle complex layouts in a way that can be changed relatively easily but that approach doesn't appear to work with Adobe LiveCycle designer.

Any thoughts or insights would be very much appreciated. [Sorry about the long explanation].

Thanks in advance.

[Paul_Butenko]

Hi,

As for me the best way is use subforms, you can dive your form on some logical parts of elements and wrap each part in sobform. For example you can mace subforms for sections CRIME, VICTIME, INFORMATION etc. After that you can easy manipulate them.

BR,

Paul Butenko

[Former Community Member]

What is the source of the original form? If it is not one of the supported types for import, I suggest you download a trial version of Acrobat. This will load a print driver on your system that will allow you to print to PDF. Once you create a PDF out of it (not just an image in a PDF), then you can import that PDF and Designer will turn it into an XDP that you can manipulate.

Hope that helps

Paul

[Former Community Member]

The source of the original form is a word template (.dot) file but the client did'nt provide it unfortunately.  I have Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro installed - do I need to download some trial version of something else too?

I am not familiar with the full suite of Acrobat products.  If I can convert the word template to an XDP, I think that would solve my problem. [I might be able to get the client to provide the original .dot word templates]

Geoff.

[Former Community Member]

Thanks for the tip Paul,  I have just started playing around with sub forms and I can see how they help to group things together.

Geoff.

[Former Community Member]

If you already have Acrobat then no other software is required. Can you get the word file? If so then try importing that into Designer directly. It will try and convert it, if that does not look good then print it to PDF 1st then import the PDF.

Paul

[Former Community Member]

Thanks very much Paul,  it looks like I can get the original word template file from the client.  I am going to try out your approach today to see how this works out.   It could save me a great deal of time!

Geoff.

[Jono_Moore]

Couple of tips for things I've found useful:

Figure out the main objects and styles you need and make a bunch of standard objects formatted the way you want and add them to an Object Library.

Figure out a grid that will work for you and use the snap to grid feature - makes putting things together much easier. I use Points but something like a 1/16" grid works well.

[Former Community Member]

Thanks for the information Jono,  I can see that I am going to need to do this on my forms because it becomes very tedious resetting font sizes, background colors etc. every time I drag a field onto a form.

I will be taking a look at grid and snap to grid features too.

[Former Community Member]

I justed wanted to say thanks for all of the help.   I think I am getting closer to an agreed approach with the client that might work.

It looks like they will be fine with me just overlaying the fields on top of the Adobe image for most of the pages just because it will take a long time to create the layout manually for each one.  There is one page that is dynamic in nature because the number of table items on that page can potentially increase to any number - that part I am thinking of handling dynamically.

Basically there will be a static image for each page except the dynamic one.   When all the fields are populated I will concatenate them all together and handle the page numbers in code.  [I will be using VB code with the apToolkit to handle the form data binding and concatenation of pdf images].

Its a little messy but we think this effort should be less than trying to create that complicated layout on all of the pages.

If anybody has any thoughts on that or similar experience I would very much like to hear about it. [The image file is in the original post and it is called "TheGoal.pdf".  Each page on that will be broken down to an individual image and page 2 is the part I will try to handle as separate dynamic form because the items in the "Property" section can increase to any number of items]

Geoff.