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Topic: Re: OmniForm Premium - anyone used it?
Conf: (P-PDF) Forms & FDF, Msg: 28271
From: jann
Date: 10/8/2001 08:54 PM

Thanks for the BFMA link.

>>Acrobat is NOT a forms management system, and Acrobat is not a forms design tool.<<

True, but what I find strange is that Adobe have been desperately promoting the Forms side of Acrobat (and are obviously very proud of it), yet haven't got their act together to provide the necessary support for users who take up the technology. Sorry, but a few pages about ADBC tucked away on a CD does not count as support.

Everytime you go to an Adobe seminar in the UK, you have to endure an over-excited ePaper person demo'ing a (US-originated)form; however all the firms I speak to report the same problem - they like the way Acrobat forms can easily be created, but can't take the concept any further because Adobe don't offer a product/support for dealing with data coming out of the form. Also, like many, they are totally confused about the exact restrictions on form filling depending on the various flavours of Acrobat.

You don't have to be a genius to see that if someone can provide a product line which a) has an easy way to generate electronic forms, + b) a universal, freebie/cheapie reader for these forms, + c) an easy way to extract the data submitted from these forms and put it into a database, then they probably have a winner on their hands.

Adobe, to their credit, managed a + b. However, without 'c', neither a nor b are much use to your average firm. I don't wish to sound cynical, but this appears to be typical Adobe coprorate behaviour i.e. a depressing inability to join-up-the-dots.

I'm interested to see whether the Omniform solution - which at first glance looks like offering a, b + c, -could end up overtaking Adobe. Any users out there?