PDF

While PDF seems static to a lot of people, that's more a matter of the way it's typically been used rather than an aspect of the technology itself. If you want to do more with PDF than distribute documents, you can....

Sometimes, as on tax forms, these relationships get pretty complicated. PDF preserves page layout, so it is a natural way to publish forms on the Web. The next decision is, how many PDF form features should you add? If you add no features,...

This enables the user to review the data, update a single field, and submit this change back to the server. With HTML forms, you can set field values as the form is served to the user. With PDF forms, you can use the Forms Data Format (FDF) to ...

FDF data contains the URL for your PDF form and the data with which to fill the form. Upon receiving FDF data, Acrobat (or Reader) will open the referenced PDF form and then populate it with the given information. The next problem is how to e...

We have discussed how to collect form data [Hack #2] and how to drive forms [Hack #75] . Now, let's use what we know to program an interactive, online form-filling session, such as the one in Figure 6-6 (visit http://www.pdfhacks.com/form_ses...

Saving the file produces a lovely copy of an empty form. How annoying! Correct this problem server-side by merging the PDF form and its data. Then, offer this filled-in form as a download for the user's records. After merging, the form fie...

pdftk is a simple, free tool for doing everyday things with PDF documents. It can: Split and merge PDF pages [Hack #51] Decrypt and encrypt PDF documents [Hack #52] Burst a PDF document into single pages [Hack #71] Uncompress and recompress...

When editing PDFs at the text level, it helps to know how to navigate these nodes. The data itself usually is compressed and unreadable. pdftk [Hack #79] can uncompress these streams, making the PDF more interesting to read and much more ha...

Here we edit this PDF text and then use pdftk [Hack #79] to cover our tracks. pdftk can also compress the page streams when we're done. An unsuitable text editor can quietly damage your PDF. Test your text editor by simply opening ...

It handles binary data nicely, it is mature, and it is free. Also, you can extend it with plug-ins, which is what we'll do. First, let's download and install gVim. Visit http://www.vim.org. The download page offers links and instructio...

Get a clearer picture of reader response by modifying the PDF's hyperlinks so that they pass document information to your web server. For example, if your July newsletter's PDF edition has hyperlinks to: http://www.pdfhacks.com/index....

For example, you could fashion the cover of your personalized PDF sales brochure [Hack #89] to include the customer's name: "Created for Mary Jane Doe on March 15, 2004." To do this, let's use what we know about modifying PDF text in a pl...

PDF pages are hard. One simple way to create dynamic PDF is to first create the document in HTML and then use HTMLDOC to transform it into PDF, as shown in Figure 6-15. This works for single pages and long documents. Figure 6-15. Usin...

You can also use Perl to script Acrobat on your local machine [Hack #95] . Given the great number of packages that extend Perl, it is no surprise that packages exist for creating and manipulating PDF. Let's take a look. 6.14.1 Install Pe...

The standard PHP documentation includes a PDF Functions section that describes the popular PDFlib module (http://www.pdflib.com). However, this PDF extension is not free software. Typically, you must purchase a license and then recompile PHP ...

Not only can you create PDF, but you can also read existing PDFs and incorporate their pages into your new document. Visit http://www.lowagie.com/iText/ for documentation and downloads. You can download an alternative, development branch from...

A user visits to learn what packages you offer. She enters her preferences and tastes into an online form and your site returns several suggestions. Now, take this scenario to the next level. Create a custom PDF report based on these suggesti...

For example, you need to create an invoice's background form, with its logo and rules, only once. You can create the invoice data dynamically as needed and then superimpose it on this form to yield the final invoice. Perform this final m...

yeslogic.com) of Melbourne, Australia, offers an extremely simple little tool for converting XML documents styled with CSS into PDF or PostScript. It's called Prince and it's currently at Version 3.0. It runs on Windows or Red Hat Linux (...

apache.org/fop/) is an open source Java application that reads an XSL-FO (http://www.w3.org/TR/xsl/) tree and renders the result primarily as PDF, although other formats are possible, such as Printer Control Language (PCL), PostScript (PS),...