Skip to main content
Participant
August 9, 2010
Answered

Seeking Ideas on Corporate Forms Creation

  • August 9, 2010
  • 1 reply
  • 674 views

I use CF9.  Within my company, I think I could probably find a user that has Acrobat and that suite of stuff.

I'm looking for a way to generate forms that when printed are identical to the originals.  For the sake of argument, imagine these forms to be your taxes --the long ones.

Does anyone have an idea of how I might go about creating and printing these form reliably?  I do have some options:

1.  Form and Data can be separate.

2.  It would be nice to have a visual rep of the form on the screen with overlaid fields (but I have forms with 70 or 80 little, tiny sections so a cool image of the form is not completely necessary.  I can use a simple html form to capture the data.  I do believe tho, that if I had the image and data on the screen then cfPDF would capture these into one entity for printing.

3.  When printed, the form must perfectly match the original form.  I have experience with PCL and controlling printers.  Can I do that through the browser??

4.  Data needs to be separate at some point so I can stick it in the db.  I'm guesing this will be easy enough.

I guess I'm looking for simple way to capture the form and overlay fields or to control the printer when sending a page out from the browser.

thanks

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer JR__Bob__Dobbs

    It sounds like you might want to use PDF for both collecting data and present data.

    The following links may help you.

    You can use CFDOCUMENT to create a PDF in ColdFusion

    http://help.adobe.com/en_US/ColdFusion/9.0/Developing/WSc3ff6d0ea77859461172e0811cbec22c24-7914.html

    You can use CFPDFFORM and related tags to manipulate existing PDFs:

    http://help.adobe.com/en_US/ColdFusion/9.0/Developing/WSc3ff6d0ea77859461172e0811cdd76f064-8000.html

    Video: http://tv.adobe.com/watch/max-2009-develop/documentdriven-applications-coldfusion-and-pdf

    You can convert a Word (.doc) to PDF with CFDOCUMENT


    http://help.adobe.com/en_US/ColdFusion/9.0/Developing/WS692D73AF-6338-495d-9E47-C2ECD8BF9307.html

    You can print on the server-side to a printer available to the server with CFPRINT.  To work with printers attached to the browser your best bet is to create a PDF for the end user.
    http://help.adobe.com/en_US/ColdFusion/9.0/CFMLRef/WSc3ff6d0ea77859461172e0811cbec22c24-7996.html

    Note: the forum site will sometimes add spaces to URLs. You may need to remove them for the links to work.

    Message was edited by: JR "Bob" Dobbs

    1 reply

    JR__Bob__DobbsCorrect answer
    Inspiring
    August 10, 2010

    It sounds like you might want to use PDF for both collecting data and present data.

    The following links may help you.

    You can use CFDOCUMENT to create a PDF in ColdFusion

    http://help.adobe.com/en_US/ColdFusion/9.0/Developing/WSc3ff6d0ea77859461172e0811cbec22c24-7914.html

    You can use CFPDFFORM and related tags to manipulate existing PDFs:

    http://help.adobe.com/en_US/ColdFusion/9.0/Developing/WSc3ff6d0ea77859461172e0811cdd76f064-8000.html

    Video: http://tv.adobe.com/watch/max-2009-develop/documentdriven-applications-coldfusion-and-pdf

    You can convert a Word (.doc) to PDF with CFDOCUMENT


    http://help.adobe.com/en_US/ColdFusion/9.0/Developing/WS692D73AF-6338-495d-9E47-C2ECD8BF9307.html

    You can print on the server-side to a printer available to the server with CFPRINT.  To work with printers attached to the browser your best bet is to create a PDF for the end user.
    http://help.adobe.com/en_US/ColdFusion/9.0/CFMLRef/WSc3ff6d0ea77859461172e0811cbec22c24-7996.html

    Note: the forum site will sometimes add spaces to URLs. You may need to remove them for the links to work.

    Message was edited by: JR "Bob" Dobbs

    DoveLewisAuthor
    Participant
    August 11, 2010

    Thanks JR,

    guess I better get to work...