[kwlug-disc] (Windows) savable pdf forms?

[Paul Nijjar]

On Tue, Nov 02, 2010 at 03:36:30PM -0400, unsolicited wrote:
> I will be collecting a bunch of information (name, phone number, e-mail 
> address).
>
> I understand I can create an openoffice document with fields, export as 
> pdf, and create a pdf form.

I have looked into doing this in the past. All my efforts ended in
tears. That was a few months ago. 

This does not address your query directly, but one solution I have
seen is to turn to the Web. One site I know of used a Google Docs
spreadsheet: the people filling out the form would go to a site that
had a web form where the backend was a Google Docs spreadsheet. Users
did not need to have Google accounts to fill out the form. 

I don't know whether this is dramatically easier to come up with a web
form from scratch. This also assumes an alternate dimension where we
trust Google Docs. 

The closest I got to answering your original query was this: 

http://www.oooforum.org/forum/viewtopic.phtml?t=81662

This person made the form fillable by creating a .fdf file, whatever
that is. Unfortunately she does not provide details about how she did
it. 

Searching for some subset of "OpenOffice", "FDF", and "Xforms" seem to
pull up results. But on quick glance it looks like you will need to
deal with buggy software and lots of reading to make this work. I
would be interested to know if you are successful, though. 

- Paul

-- 
http://pnijjar.freeshell.org