From: Dom Lachowicz (domlachowicz@yahoo.com)
Date: Thu Feb 06 2003 - 17:33:36 EST
--- abiword@interlinx.bc.ca wrote:
> Many many times, I have gotten a PDF form that I
> have had to fill in.
> I always have to resort to printing the form out and
> filling it in by
> hand with a pen. This sucks.
>
> I am wondering, what is the feasibility of something
> like Abiword
> "rendering" (using ghostscript, acrobat, xpdf,
> whatever) the PDF and
> allowing the user to "type on top" of it?
>
> The "cat's ass" would be to print the PDF and the
> text typed on top of
> it all in one shot, but even if Abiword just printed
> the added text so
> that a page had to be printed twice (once to put the
> PDF on it and the
> second time to put the text on top of the PDF), that
> would be
> sufficient.
>
> I just want to be able to do the "word processor"
> equivillent of
> putting a printed form into a typewriter and typing
> onto it.
>
> Thots?
This is called form-filling, and the only tool I know
of the currently handles this (from a user
perspective) is Adobe Acrobat.
There are other tools out there that can fill in
forms, such as the FDFTk, iText, FDFMerge. These are
generally command-line tools or libraries.
At the moment these are your only alternatives.
Importing PDF will be no small feat. Your easiest
solution may be to continue using the printer + a pen.
Dom
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