Re: Create PDF from Perl

I think we may have an XY Problem here and I have a couple of questions. You say I have about 20 forms which are Word documents. All of the forms contain the same demographic information. Why so? If they contain the same, why do you have 20? Are they somehow user specific? And are they, already fill-in forms or just plain word files?

You also so you are creating online versions of these forms. I have seen various ways to "create an online version of a form. From the "wooden table" scanned document that was converted to a pdf for printing and filling by Hand, to a sophisticated Info-Path solution. To give good advice we need to know more about you're Setup. Anyway, given you've got a standard webserver and want to use pdf I basically see two possibilities:

You create a Html-form where you query the neccessary fields from your user. Once submitted the server takes them and creates a new pdf, enriched with the users input. To create such a PDF you can use something like PDF::Template or FOP. And yes, this requires to recreate your forms but also gives you much control over the output. For example you could use different templates for different users.

The other way is to use the built-in form functions of the pdf-format. You can use CAM::PDF to read and manipulate such field values. Sadly I have no idea how to create such a file automatically.

Hope this helps.

holli, /regexed monk/

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Re^2: Create PDF from Perl by focus310 (Novice) on Apr 23, 2007 at 17:10 UTC
Yes, 20 forms. Here are some examples: Client Incident Form, Client Interview Form, Admission Agreement, Initial Plan of Care, Client Mental Status Evaluation, etc. Need I say more. All of these forms ask for client name, date of birth, data of admission, etc. These forms are also Word documents which are currently being completed by hand. They want to eliminate all the paperwork. So I'm creating the forms online. We have a table which stores all the info. When it's time to fill out a form, some of the infomation is already filled in (from the table). All that is left is to fill out the rest of the form. They want to be able to save the result of the forms as a PDF. They get audited once a year without any notice. That is why they need a PDF file. I'm not sure how to create one.	[reply]

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Re^2: Create PDF from Perl
by focus310 (Novice) on Apr 23, 2007 at 17:10 UTC

Yes, 20 forms. Here are some examples: Client Incident Form, Client Interview Form, Admission Agreement, Initial Plan of Care, Client Mental Status Evaluation, etc. Need I say more. All of these forms ask for client name, date of birth, data of admission, etc. These forms are also Word documents which are currently being completed by hand. They want to eliminate all the paperwork. So I'm creating the forms online. We have a table which stores all the info. When it's time to fill out a form, some of the infomation is already filled in (from the table). All that is left is to fill out the rest of the form. They want to be able to save the result of the forms as a PDF. They get audited once a year without any notice. That is why they need a PDF file. I'm not sure how to create one.

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