[plug] [OT] PDF Conversions

[Leon Brooks]

On Fri, 8 Apr 2005 16:16, Timothy White wrote:
> Mark O'Shea wrote:
>>On Fri, April 8, 2005 12:16 pm, Timothy White said:
>>> The other reason I was hoping I could get it working without modifying
>>> the original PDF's or making a 'print' overlay was so that when a new
>>> form is released it can just be dropped in, have some default 'dummy'
>>> place holder variables filled in and then used.

>>> From some of what I've seen FDF solves some of these problems but
>>> unless I can easily get the PDF's into form format, I'm stuffed.

>> Have you considered the rather un-unixlike solution of (shudder) typing
>> the forms in again and putting them in format you like?

> Unfortunately this isn't an option as the forms are official and updates
> are released semi-regularly. Also, if I have to re-enter forms then it
> means that when it's finished I can't leave the project for someone else
> with out training them how to re-enter forms. At least if it was
> semi-automatic I could probably automate it using PHP and Perl on the
> server.

You can use the original PDFs as a watermark and make a form file consisting 
of just empty fields to overprint.

KWord also reads PDFs, not sure how much joy you'll get as it depends a lot on 
how the PDFs were constructed.

Why not ask the people who do the forms is you can have it in another format, 
e.g., shudder, MS-Word?

Cheers; Leon

--
http://cyberknights.com.au/     Modern tools; traditional dedication
http://plug.linux.org.au/       Member, Perth Linux User Group
http://slpwa.asn.au/            Member, Linux Professionals WA
http://osia.net.au/             Member, Open Source Industry Australia
http://linux.org.au/            Member, Linux Australia