PDF Fillable Forms made with LiveCycle Designer - "Permanency" of the technology

[BrownDesk123]

I like using LiveCycle Designer to make PDF forms.  I want to use it with organizations I work for to make fillable forms.  But I am concerned that the forms will "break" more easily than Acroforms.  Generally - is this concern of mine valid?

-If I have a subform in a flowed form that is made "visible" in certain circumstances, and "hidden" in others-using a JavaScript, will this functionality work always going forward?  What if Adobe sold Designer?  Is it less likely to work than similar functionality in Acroforms?

-How about the design of the form itself - if designed with LiveCycle Designer - the text, its placement of form fields, and their functionality, pages...

Thank you for feedback on this.

[George_Johnson · Accepted solution]

It's impossible to say if support for XFA in Acrobat/Reader will be in the future. Most non-Adobe PDF viewers and Adobe's mobile PDF viewers have limited or no support for XFA forms, dynamic in particular, which has been a significant problem for a while. Acroforms have significantly more support and are part of the ISO 32000 standard, unlike XFA. JavaScript as used in Acroforms is being standardized, but I don't believe the XFA counterpart is.

[BrownDesk123]

GIven the support decisions for Adobe regarding LiveCycle (which I don't really understand), if I make a form using Adobe LiveCycle will the form continue to work properly for say the next three years? 

e.g. I design a form with a bunch of subforms/sections appearing with text in each one.  The user makes selections on a set of checkboxes and only the selected sections appear on the document - that excellent feature of Livecycle which not only allows the subform to be visible or invisible, but actually removes the section from the layout.

Thanks a lot for answering these difficult questions.

[altrue990]

My thinking is that as long as Adobe sells AEM with XFA support, they will continue to support XFA in the Acrobat tools. I don't think they want to break backwards compatibility, especially in a format that is designed for long term archival.

However, there is no guarantee. Flash was added, and subsequently removed from Acrobat. The depreciation of XFA in PDF 2.0 likely gives them an out to stop supporting it at any time they choose.