I purchased Acrobat Pro Extended 9 over a year ago. LiveCycle Designer came packaged with Acrobat. So I have been using acrobat minimally during most of this time and have just started exploring form creation in the past few months.
My question relates to the basic purpose of LiveCycle Designer (LCD) and how it relates to Acrobat in general. I have discovered the form building and editing features of LCD but am quite confused about how that is different from form creation and editing in Acrobat. At first I thought that LCD was the form function component for the Acrobat suite, but at a recent web seminar a Adobe staff person told me that while form creation and editing is possible in LCD both have always been a part of Acrobat.
So the Adobe sales information I see on their website isn't much use. The help features of both products isn't much help either. After looking at both of these places, all I get or see is information on how to do x, y or z specific task. What I want to know is this
1) Are the form creation and editing capabilities in Acrobat 9 the same as in LiveCycle Designer?
2) If they are the same, why would I want to use LCD?
3) If I have more capability in LCD, just what features or functions are there that I do not have in Acrobat 9?
4) How do I decide when to use Acrobat or LCD to create forms?
5) So if I create form A in Acrobat and Form B in LCD, is my user capable of using both form A and B using only Reader 9 or 10? In other words is there some sort of extra run-time piece that my user needs to read and use Form B that was created in LCD?
Questions about Reader Extensions
6) What are the Reader Extensions I see mentioned occasionally?
7) How do I know when a form I have created requires Reader extensions to be read? I.e. what features in form design require this?
7) Is a user who has only Reader (i.e. most current, 9 or 10) able to use Read Extensions or must they download a separate component? If they must download a separate component, is that also free as the reader is?
If you reply, please be precise.
Basic Purpose Information for LiveCycle Designer and how it relates to Acrobat, Reader Extensions
2010-11-26 09:25:15
My Product Information:
LiveCycle Designer, Windows
LiveCycle Designer, Windows
2010-11-26 11:28:09
#2
This is a good article on differences between Acroforms and XFA forms: http://acrobatusers.com/blogs/thomp/so-what-difference-between-acroforms-and-xfa
2010-11-26 14:47:42
#3
Thank you for the detailed information. It helps a lot. Also, knowing that LiveCycle was purchased by Adobe from another company, albeit several years back, also helps understand the big picture.
The link you provided that compares Acroforms and XFA was very helpful as well and just the kind of detail I was looking for.
The link you provided that compares Acroforms and XFA was very helpful as well and just the kind of detail I was looking for.
2010-11-28 04:47:03
#4
George explained differences well, but I would add that XFA forms advantage/difference is that it is designed to work mostly with XML data. You can add XML schema to the PDF and bind all fields into the XML structure, and later on submit or integrate that XML rather than the PDF itself.
1. No, the forms technologies are completely separate.
2. I use Acrobat for most of the forms I deal with. The main advantage to XFA forms is they can be dynamic at run-time. Pages, table rows, fields, etc. can all be added. Acroforms can be dynamic as well, but it's more difficult to get it to work with Reader, since the necessary usage rights cannot be added with Acrobat, but require LiveCycle Reader Extensions (see below).
Look around this site for more information and tutorials. There's a lot of information on both, and some good comparisons of the two forms technologies.
I find Acrobat forms much easier to work with. Simplicity has its virtues. There's a lot of things available in PDF/Acrobat that XFA documents cannot take advantage of.
5. Users with Reader will be able to work with both types of forms. There are more backwards compatibility problems with XFA forms, but Reader 8.1 and above should work well with either.
6. This has to do with usage rights that get embedded in a PDF document. Reader is not normally able to do certain things, such as add comments, save a modified form, add a digital signature, export form data, SOAP, etc. When usage rights are added to a document, Reader is then able to do some or all of these things, depending on which rights are added. Acrobat is able to add some usage rights, such as saving, commenting, and digital signatures, but not all. For example, it doesn't allow exporting form data, SOAP, spawning page templates, etc.
Adobe does sell a product to add all types of usage rights. It is called LiveCycle Reader Extensions ES, but you have to negotiate a price based on your intended usage.
7. The big one is if the form has to be saved. This requires the Save usage right. It can be applied with Acrobat (8-10). I mentioned some others above.