Previous | Next | (P-PDF) Acrobat 7
Topic: Re: What Are We To Do? (Via Email)
Conf: (P-PDF) Acrobat 7, Msg: 128792
From: prodok
Date: 3/4/2005 05:46 AM
For the moment, forget XFA forms (in other words Designer 7) for that
(although I could imagine some kind of kludge using dynamic
subforms....)
One possibility would be creating the base document in InDesign (or
even Wurd), and work with OCG (Optional Content Groups, aka Layers).
You will then place the fields on top of this base PDF (assuming that
the fields themselves are language-independent), and use some Acrobat
JavaScripts to change the language.
Another possibility would mean setting up all the text contents in
fields, and define the text strings in arrays. Then, you would have
some logic to load the strings into the fields, depending on the
selection.
And a third possibility would be similar to the first one, but placing
the base form into button fields, and do some show/hide logic for
displaying the background.
If the form is a smart PDF form, the second possibility provides the
best potential, because with that, you could also easily adjust any
kind of alerts, short descriptions etc...
To provide an evaluation/quote on the effort to get this form to
multi-linguality, I would have to have a look at it.
FWIW, I am right now converting a highly sophisticated product catalog
to be quadri-lingual, according to method 2 (for the ones who know it,
it is the 6 year old belt and pulley classic...).
Hope, this can help.
Max Wyss
PRODOK Engineering
Low Paper workflows, Smart documents, PDF forms
CH-8906 Bonstetten, Switzerland
Fax: +41 44 700 20 37
or +1 815 425 6566
e-mail: mailto:max@prodok.com
http://www.prodok.com
[ Building Bridges for Information ]
______________________
> I did a form in english but now how do I automate getting the form done
> in other languages (German, Dutch, Finnish, Italian, Spanish,
> Portuguese, Tagalog, and others) without having to hand build
> everything? I can't see how to get Designer out of the cumbersome
> catagory.
