Hello

We are revising some forms, currently published as .doc files which are printed and completed manually. The users are public so have a wide variety of software. MS Word and Excel are de-facto standards amongst the users -- the FOSS users can mostly work with those file formats while the Windows/Office majority cannot work with ODF formats. Hey ho

It would be nice if the users could complete the forms interactively and email them. Some users still need to be able to print and complete manually.

The FOSS users should not be disadvantaged. This could be limiting because I understand OOo support for .doc and .xls forms is incomplete including incompatibilities between VBA and OOo Basic.

It doesn't have to be an office suite based solution if anything else is more suitable ... ?

Best

Charles

Is the logical end not do do it online? No reason you can't write decent css for a printable version as well as online, and then there is no end user software to care about.

The best solution I know of for creating and tracking emailed forms responses unfortunately is for Windows, Adobe Acrobat, however the forms themselves can be completed using acroread for your open source users.

Thanks Chris

No end user software is very attractive. Online submission is the ultimate goal but we don't have the infrastructure or resources for it yet, especially as the user may not have all the information they need when they start completing the form so periodic saves are important. We are taking first baby steps from a paper-only system so simplicity and familiarity are important. That's why generating a local file and attaching to an email is attractive.

Is it possible to adapt the browser client approach to generate a human-readable local file?

Thanks mjolnir

Is that the paid-for Adobe Acrobat? AFAIK the free version does not allow .pdf creation ... ?

I believe that is true although I think you may be able to create a form with the 30 day trial version. You create the form and then enable "user's rights" to enable your users to save a copy of the completed form to the local h/d. I haven't used it in a while so I may be rusty on some of the details.

The real question is how many responses, how many forms, how many users? If the numbers are low I agree with Chris that an online approach is the best option.

Thanks mjolnir

Sounds like a possibility, probably using a FOSS solution to create the form. Most users will have Acrobat Reader so would test with that. I will wait a while to see what else is suggested before exploring.

Say a few hundred users, 4 or 5 forms (of which each user chooses one) and 10-20 forms submitted per week.

Yes, Adobe Acrobat is the paid software. (As someone else pointed out, you can use a 30-day trial for testing.) Adobe Reader is the free download that your Windows users can use to read, fill out, and print the forms.

As previously pointed out, there are other PDF readers out there (mostly for Linux, and a few for Windows, too). This is because Adobe opened up their previously proprietary PDF format. The question is, do all will let users fill in the forms??? I don't know, but you should install and test several, for filling out the forms you create with Adobe Reader.

Examples of some PDF readers are:

• Acroread
• Xpdf
• Okular
• NitroPDF

I would very much like to know more about the practicality of this type of solution.

Thanks for the information ShellyCat

I'm still exploring options and PDF forms are sounding good for both the users that want to print and complete manually and for users that want to complete them interactively and either print or email them.

Do you know about extracting data from PDF forms that are emailed?

I don't, unfortunately. I don't work in a corporate environment right now...at least not a high-tech one.

Another option would be to create PDF forms using Scribus.
http://www.linuxuser.co.uk/tutorials...-with-scribus/

Thanks michaelk that looks very promising; I'll explore it tomorrow.

Nice link. I have intended to check out Scribus for a while but since I haven't worked in a couple of years and already own Acrobat I haven't had the need to try it. It appears to be adequate for the OP's needs.

@catkin "Do you know about extracting data from PDF forms that are emailed?" That is the greatest strength of the Windows software. It will collate the responses to a specific form and then expedite the data entry into a database. I have not done so but I am reasonably sure you could use various tools available in Linux to build scripts to extract the data from the returned forms.

One strategy I have used is to save the entries to a text box in the form formated with commas and a FS (field separator). Copy and paste that data to a .csv file and import it into your favorite database.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...estion-763714/

Wouldn't just about any word processor work with RTF files?