Re: Interactive forms

G'Day Veronica

At 14:50 4/10/00 -0700, Veronica wrote:
>I am in the process for defining standards for our intranet (for our
>publishers). One of the issues I have to determine is what software to
>use for our interactive forms. We have many forms in Word that people
>use and are putting them on the Intranet. We are not recreating these as
>HTML forms. The two things I am considering are Interactive PDF forms
>and Word Interactive forms. I am open to other suggestions however. The
>features we need are - to be able to save the forms with content in the
>fields so people don't have to re-enter information over and over.
>Calculations on the fields in some cases and that they print true (these
>are not for online submission). So far I don't have much to tip me one
>way or the other except the fact that we all already have Word and we
>don't all have Adobe Acrobat. Any experiences out there with, or
>knowledge about either of these types of forms that might influence my
>decision would be appreciated.

It depends upon how standardised your user-base will be.  If you can 
guarantee that all users are on the same platform and have the same version 
of Word installed, then Word files will do.  PDF files provide a means of 
combating OS and version requirements.  In my case, I was able to get 
Acrobat Reader included in the "minimum standard operating environment" 
since I have to cope with both Mac and Windows with machine ages ranging 
from 6 yrs old to present.

Other issues:
* Word files tend to be larger than PDFs
* Word files tend to be easier for the user to alter (may or may not be 
desirable)


Chris Higgs <c.higgs(at)landfood.unimelb.edu.au>
Institute of Land and Food Resources
University of Melbourne http://www.landfood.unimelb.edu.au

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