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On Jan 22, 2004, at 2:19 PM, Lauterbach.Mark wrote:
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Hi, Jim
I'm curious - how time intensive is it to use Acrobat 6 as the artwork
software for your forms? I've used apps like Form Flow and that make it
pretty easy to draw boxes, lines, etc. I haven't used Acrobat 6 yet but
I know that Acrobat 5 doesn't seem to let me "add" text that isn't there
- just modify existing static text.
Aha! You didn't RTFM! Select the text touch-up tool in Acro5 or 6. Hold down the option key, and click anywhere on the form. You should get a cursor, and be able to type text. Now, that text will be in the default font, which is usually too big, too ugly, or something else you don't want. Select it, hold down the CTRL (not the command key) and click on the text. A popup menu will allow you to select "Properties", and this will get you a font dialog which will let you select the face and size text you want. But guess what: Your odds of having it precisely placed are pretty low. So select the Touch-up Object tool, click on the new text, and drag it where you want it. (Don't feel badly, though. Adobe hides this stuff from you.)
Need a logo? Make a button a little bigger than you need, no borders, no fill, icon only. Browse for the JPEG of the logo, which will serve as the button's icon, click on it, and you're done. Want to include a photo, like for a personnel form? Make a button about the size you want. Set a mouseup action to run a javascript. Enter "event.target.buttonImportIcon()" without the quotes as the javascript. When this button is clicked, it pops up a file menu to allow the form user to select from a wide range of graphics file types, including JPG and PNG, etc.. Select the file type as JPG, navigate to the photo, click on it, and presto! it appears on your form, properly scaled.
Need a special area of a form that's gonna be a PITA? Scan it off the paper form, use PS Elements or GraphicConverter to select the area you want to duplicate, do a Trim Selection in GC, and save the resulting portion of your scan as a JPG. Open your form in Acrobat, make a button the size of the scan, and set that JPG you just made as the button's icon. You can overlay text fields on top of it if you set the button to do nothing when clicked.
From the other replies on this topic, it doesn't appear that Acro6 is any more trouble than the more formal packages.
If your form involves tables, there's not much drawing to do. Just make the fields adjoin or overlap each other at their end points, so you have a chain of cells like in a table; just do the first row. Set the appearance of each of the fields to a thin border and white background. In Acro 6 Pro, all you have to do now is select all those cells, control-click on them, and select "Duplicate Multiple Copies" (or something like that) from the popup menu. Tell it how many rows of those cells you need, how far apart you want them, and you're done with the table. All of the cells are named automatically by the naming convention. Acro 6 does have a small number of drawing tools, but don't look for Bezier curves or text on a path or anything like that. You need Illustrator for that stuff anyway.
I'm looking into artwork solutions for our forms department and, to be honest, never even considered "drawing" with Acrobat. Do you have experience with this?
These things will work for most simple forms, like order forms or invoices. For really complex stuff, I'd use something like Illustrator. Draw the form in Illustrator, and save it as a PDF. Set Illustrator as the graphic editor in Acrobat. Now open the form in Acrobat, and place your fields and JavaScripts. If you find that you need to edit something you did in illustrator, you can go back and do it.
Have fun, Jim
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