Acrobat PDF forms

Anyone got it working?

To allow you to easily edit a form, you should change the action url a little, adding the name of the pdf in the url like this

http://www.compkarori.co.nz:8000/md/public/process-pdf.rsp?pdfname=SA09A1.pdf

So, when you edit a form and resubmit it, the process-pdf.rsp script can pull out the name, description, and class from the database and prefill those for you in the submission form.

The check data is not being restored ( I'm not sure it is even being saved ).

Will have to investigate.

The check data is being saved on the server.

The problem is caused by fields with spaces in them .. so if you have a checkbox named "Check Box12", it gets saved as "Check+Box12" instead.

So, when you retrieve the xfdf data, the field names are now wrong.

I'll have to see if it's a bug I introduced, or is caused by something else.

In the meantime, don't use spaces in your field names

I downloaded wireshark which is a protocol analyzer and traced the http that Acrobat sends.

It looks like Acrobat is adding the "+" to the field names .. a bit lame. It should be http encoding them.

Oh well, what I will do is replace all "+" in field names with a space .. which means you are not allowed + in a field name.

I used WireShark to assess my VOIP reliability.

My version is now working ... if Acrobat adds a +, my server will remove them from the fieldnames.

This allows you to view a filled in pdf where checks have been made.

My Synapse client is now able to bring up the Acroforms.

Got a lot more work to do yet though before it reaches the functionality of the portal.

OmniForm auto-names PDF controls without spaces, using hyphens and underscores, and most other applications I use that create PDF controls usually autoname them "Checkbox1", "FillText1" and so forth. I usually avoid spaces in control names, using either the CheckBoxOne type of naming or underscores.

Since the Web Portal has to be running, does it matter to you whether you use synapse.exe or the Web Portal to use PDF forms?

If you have existing paper forms or forms in another format (.doc, .rtf, or whatever), just send them to me, and I'll use OmniForm to make PDF AcroForms out of them. OmniForm works best with 300 dpi tiff format scans, and runs a wizard over the scan, auto-magically OCR'ing the text designing a new form with controls. OmniForm has a print driver as well, so in Windows you can print forms from any applications to it, but the print driver is not nearly as accurate as the 300 dpi tiff scans in my experience.

Graham,

On the Web Portal Screen, where is says "List of Acroforms for XXXXXX", table looks like :
<table cellpadding="2" cellspacing="1" height="26" id="myScrollTable" width="848"><tbody><tr class="r1"><td class="c1">9-Mar-2009 </td> <td class="c2"> ReferralForm.pdf </td> <td class="c3"> Refer patient to a third party for treatment </td> <td class="c4"> Completed</td></tr></tbody></table>

Would it be possible to make the form description (Refer patient to a third party for treatment) editable by the user? That would be essentially the same as adding a consult tag name in synapse.exe. It would be really cool if that were possible so I could rapidly identify the visit and the purpose of the form when going back and viewing them.

The description field is pulled out from the forms table so no, you wouldn't want to edit it as it would affect every instance of this form.

But there is also a 128 char comment field not shown yet for this purpose.

CutePDF Prof is adding the spaces in the field names....

The latest synapse-server creates two tables.

Acroforms - used to hold the name of the pdf, class and description, and the xfdf template.

Acroused - holds forms used by patients - the xfdfdata, and a comment field, which is not being used yet.

we need to make up a list of variables that can be used inside the acroform templates.

I just checked on the "Name" field when adding text box, check box, button, and or other control in Cute PDF Pro. It puts in a default name, but you are free to change it and eliminate spaces or "illegal" characters.

Is the list so far still the following?


"$fname"
"$surname"
"$fullname"
"$dob"
"$age"
"$address1"
"$city"
"$zip"
"$ssn"
"$homeph"
"$date"

We discussed diagnoses already, and vitals would be about my next thing to add to the wish list.

Oh, that's great ... I will just wait to implement the comment field.

I had my first need to use an Acroform today.

Patient needed an authority to renew her Alendronate ... but as her prednisone dose was too low, I didn't need it in the end as she no longer qualified.

Still the form popped up with her and my details[]

"$fname"
"$surname"
"$fullname"
"$dob"
"$age"
"$address1"
"$city"
"$zip"
"$ssn"
"$homeph"
"$date"

Yes, and a few more .. if someone wants to document these in the wiki somewhere ... it would be good.

As for diagnoses ... still depends on how we can get them into a drop down list on the pdf ... apparently not possible?

Here's a thought .. I have not delved into it much, but you can stick annotations and popups on a PDF, and these can be defined in the XFDF.

So, maybe you can create a popup for the diagnoses, and Synapse can populate the popup? And then it's just cut and paste into the right field once you select the diagnosis you want??