Form Creation: Acrobat Standard v9 vs. LiveCycle Designer

I think forms created in Acrobat (Acroforms) are far easier to create and understand than forms created with LiveCycle Designer (XFA forms). XFA forms can have certain advantages over Acroforms, and Acroforms have advantages over XFA forms, so it really depends on what you need the form to do and how it will be used. If you want to give more information, you'll probably get more opinions that may help you decide which way to go. Note that LiveCycle Designer comes with Acrobat Pro, but not Standard.

George

Thanks George. Since posting my question I did some reading about XFA forms; static vs dynamic for example. It appears to be a more robust design tool with many features that I probably don’t need. At this point my form requirements are very basic, nothing exotic.

There are two reasons why I asked if XFA form creation was easier.

1) As mentioned, I have been starting with a Word document as the basis for my forms. That approach allows me to quickly format the basic layout and create formatted text in Word then I let Acroforms detect fields which I then modify. I have problems with that approach when any of the Word text needs revisions. I have to redesign my form from scratch and reapply all mods I’ve made to the Acroform fields. Occasionally for quick and dirty text changes I’ve superimposed a text field on top of the Word text but that is pretty hokey. As far as I know there is no other way to modify the Word text from within Acroform design mode.

Maybe a solution to this problem would be to create the form entirely in Acroform. I guess I would create text fields for static text, with rich text enabled for bold & italic text, close the form from editing, enter and format the text, then change the fields to read only. Is there a better / easier way?2) One of my forms has 5 signature fields that Reader users need to sign and I can envision using signature fields in future forms. But my Acrobat Standard v9 does not allow me to enable digital signature rights for Reader; Pro or Pro Extended is required. I cannot cost justify paying $159 to upgrade my v9 Standard to Pro just to gain this feature therefore I was wondering if the LiveCycle Designer feature would make form creation easier. I do not have a need for any of the other features in Pro.

Greg

Greg,

For #1, the process can be much simpler. If you ever need to make changes to the underlying document to which you've added form fields, all you need to do is go back to your source document (in Word), make the changes, and create a new PDF. Then open the old PDF that has the form fields and select "Document > Replace Pages" to replace the old pages with the new. Any form fields, bookmarks, JavaScript code, links, and other things will be retained, and just the underlying page contents will be updated. Much easier!For #2, the answer is no. To Reader-enable a document, even one made in LiveCycle Designer, you have to open the file in Acrobat (Pro) and select "Advanced > Extend Features in Adobe Reader". But again, you'd need Acrobat Pro to get LiveCycle Designer.> I do not have a need for any of the other features in Pro.Not yet...


George

Many thanks this time George. Your suggestion will save me a ton of time in the future.

For the time being I’ll have to scrap my digital signature idea until v10 comes out then upgrade to Pro and the new version.

Greg