PDF Forms

Abstract

Forms are an important new feature introduced with Acrobat 3.0 and PDF 1.2. They offer huge potential for interactive applications. Firstly Acrobat forms emulate the well-known — and not very popular — paper forms containing descriptive text and input fields where the user may enter data. The filled-out form can be printed afterwards. This simplifies using conventional forms but doesn’t yet add substantial value. Electronic forms are more interesting if you no longer need to print them out. Instead, the form contents are stored on a disk file or transferred over the intranet or Internet. Web forms gained much popularity by making use of the relevant HTML features. Similarly, Acrobat documents may contain form fields, the contents of which are sent from the Web browser to the Web server. As you would expect from PDF, Acrobat forms offer many more design and layout features than HTML forms.