These forums are now Read Only. If you have an Acrobat question, ask questions and get help from one of our experts.

Undocumented FormCalc Scientific Functions

davidbb
Registered: Oct 23 2007
Posts: 17

Gang,

I couldn't find references to this in other posts. I'm relatively new to LiveCycle, so if it's widely known or has already been covered, I apologize.

In researching the need to use exponents in an exit event of a FormCalc script (see post "Exponents: Raising a Number to a Power"), I stumbled upon some information that was supposedly part of the Designer 7.1 FormCalc spec.

It seems that there may be a host of undocumented scientific functions, such as:

Acos()
Asin()
Atan()
Cos()
Deg2Rad()
Exp()
Log()
Pi()
Pow()
Rad2Deg()
Sin()
Sqrt()
Tan()

I don't know if they are all present, nor do I have the syntax, but I would have to assume that they would be similar to those in use in other environments.

I can say that I successfully used the pow(x,y) function in a FormCalc script to raise x to the power of y. I am using LiveCycle v8.

I hope this can help someone out there like me who is struggling and has little-to-no JavaScript experience.

-David

My Product Information:
LiveCycle Designer, Windows
thomp
Expert
Registered: Feb 15 2006
Posts: 4411
Good Find !! Adobe's put in lots and lots of undocumented functionality and very little of it is widely known. So thanks for pointing it out.

Thom Parker
The source for PDF Scripting Info
www.pdfscripting.com
Very Important - How to Debug Your Script

nicoboy
Registered: Jan 12 2010
Posts: 14
Thanks dude!

I cant belive that they would not have standard scientific expressions.
radzmar
Expert
Registered: Nov 3 2008
Posts: 1202
Thanks for the hint. ;-)

An overview of other patially undocumented FormCalc function can be found here.

[url]http://www.w3.org/1999/05/XFA/xfa-formcalc-19990614[/url]

radzmar
LoveCycle Blog
Documents you need:
LiveCycle Designer ES2 Docs

PetafromOz
Registered: Jun 8 2009
Posts: 230
Brilliant, thanks to you all. Mostly I prefer to use JavaScript, but sometimes FormCalc comes in handy - so it's good to have these extra options.

from way... underground at Parkes - central West NSW - Australia