[Tex/LaTex] PDF Form Fields; charsize=auto

formshyperref

I'm using hyperref to write a fillable form, but my users have a tendency to overfill the text boxes causing the text to be invisible on the printed sheet.

Acrobat allows for a definition of the character size in boxes to be "auto", that is, it will shrink the size of the font of the input text so that it fills the text box. However:

\documentclass[10pt]{article}
\usepackage{hyperref}

\begin{document}
    \begin{Form}
        \TextField[bordercolor=,width=10em,charsize=auto,name=box]{Thisisabox}
    \end{Form}
\end{document}

does not compile, because hyperref requires that charsize be a number.

It is inconvenient to keep going into Acrobat every time I update the forms and manually set EVERY (there are dozens over 4 different forms) box individually to auto. Is there any easier way to do this using hyperref (or even Acrobat?)

Best Answer

Set charsize option to 0pt to get auto size for text fields:

\TextField[bordercolor=1 0 0,width=10em,charsize=0pt,name=box]{Thisisabox}

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[Tex/LaTex] Losing check box entries when saving LaTeX-generated PDF form

PDF forms are very similar to HTML forms. You need to add "name" for the CheckBoxes. this worked, when I tested it with Acrobat Pro.

enter image description here

\documentclass{minimal}
\usepackage[pdftex]{hyperref}
\begin{document}
\begin{Form}
    \noindent
    \CheckBox[bordercolor={0 0 0},height=1ex,width=1.5ex, name=ch1]{Yes}\quad
    \CheckBox[bordercolor={0 0 0},height=1ex,width=1.5ex, name=ch2]{No}\quad
    \TextField[name=textfield,width=3cm,value=default]{Text:}
\end{Form}
\end{document}

Any further processing must be done with JaVaScript. A good bundle of packages is provided by acrotex. The insdljs package provided by acrotex can be very useful for producing forms.

[Tex/LaTex] PDF form as background image – filling the form fields

I verified the first part of my concept based on the link Steven (@steven-b-segletes) provided in his comment. Here is a short, working example for A4 sized pdf as a background (don't mind the coordinates...):

\documentclass[finnish,a4paper,11pt]{article}
\usepackage[a4paper]{geometry}
\usepackage{setspace}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{ifthen}

\ifthenelse{\equal{\detokenize{$headertitle$}}{\detokenize{MyTitle}}}
{
    \newenvironment{myForm}{
        \clearpage % new page for pdf form
        \begin{singlespace}
            \begin{picture}(210,297)(113,460)
                \thispagestyle{empty} % no page numbers here
                \includegraphics[width=21cm, height=29.7cm]{file.pdf} % include pdf form
    }{
            \end{picture}
        \end{singlespace}
     }
    \newcommand\MyFirstField[1]{\put(-481,653){#1}}
}

\begin{document}

% load document body from Pandoc
$body$ 

% if name of current document equals MyTitle then add and fill form
\ifthenelse{\equal{\detokenize{$headertitle$}}{\detokenize{MyTitle}}}
{
    \begin{myForm}
        \MyFirstField{$MyFirstVariable$}
    \end{myForm}
}

\end{document}

I guess this could be done using pdfpages as well, but I am not able to tell pros/cons using pdfpages. I already made one template for a form that consisted of 25 fields and it took roughly 90 minutes for finding the right coordinates. Since I have dozens of forms (and counting) that I should implement this way, I need to either find or make a tool for accelerating this process. Some sort of point-n-click with mouse.

The 3rd part of my question, about Pandoc and command line variables is still open. What is the best practise when passing multiple variables to template that is used by Pandoc when generating a pdf. In my actual template I will provide all the form inputs as parameters/variables. I know how to do it with Pandoc's --variable, but if there is more robust way, I would be glad to explore that.

Best Answer

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[Tex/LaTex] Losing check box entries when saving LaTeX-generated PDF form

[Tex/LaTex] PDF form as background image – filling the form fields

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