check box

[Geeta Gudavalli <gg...@McLeodUSA.com>]

I need to show a checkbox (as in HTML) in pdf document.  I am creating the PDF
document using Apache FOP.  If anyone can help me I greatly appreciate it..
Thank you,
Geeta

Re: check box

[Arved Sandstrom <Ar...@chebucto.ns.ca>]

At 10:15 AM 8/1/00 -0500, Geeta Gudavalli wrote:
>
>I need to show a checkbox (as in HTML) in pdf document.  I am creating the
PDF
>document using Apache FOP.  If anyone can help me I greatly appreciate it..
>Thank you,
>Geeta
>
As Art Welch said, one can use SVG (he directed us to a Hani Elabed example) 
for drawing this and other things.

On the more general subject of checkboxes as Acrobat Forms elements (things 
like buttons, radio groups, checkboxes, choices etc), and I understand that 
you (Geeta) weren't necessarily asking for any of these: I think that FOP is 
never going to be used to supplant Acrobat Exchange or any of the libraries 
that produce fully-interactive PDF documents.

FOP, first and foremost, is a layout engine. The idea is that

100% FO -> FOP -> necessary part of target format

_not_

FO -> FOP -> 100% target format

So we want to use PDF, with the PDFRenderer, to faithfully render all FO's; 
we do _not_ want to use FO's to faithfully render all of PDF.

Similarly for other output formats.

I'm not ruling out PDF interactive elements (annotations, forms) - things 
like links certainly translate into PDF annotations and maybe some of the 
forms elements.

This is important philosophically and architecturally, and I'm not the final 
word on this. This is just my opinion. If someone thinks that renderers 
should have different goals then please state your case. :-)

Just some thoughts.

Arved Sandstrom
 
Senior Developer
e-plicity.com (www.e-plicity.com)
Halifax, Nova Scotia
"B2B Wireless in Canada's Ocean Playground"