Q:
What I need in my software is to allow user to open PDF documents,
fill them and save. Currently when I double click on a field there is
an alert box with text "Coordinate conversation test. Ok.", but I
can't modify value in the field.
So, I want to know is it possible with the help of PDFNet to allow
user to modify values in the fields.
---
A:
PDFView class is a generic class for viewing PDF documents. It only
implements basic page scrolling and navigation (i.e. a 'pan' tool).
Additional tool modes (such as form field editing, text selection,
markup, etc) can be implemented by deriving from PDFView class as
illustrated in MyPDFView (http://www.pdftron.com/net/samplecode/
MyPDFView.cs).
We intentionally decided to keep PDFView class slim and generic so
that SDK users are not 'locked-in' using a control that is not doing
exactly what they want. We will probably offer additional, pre-
packaged tool modes in a form of plug-in classes or free source code.
In the meantime there are several ways you could implement form field
editing. The simplest approach is as follows:
- When MyPDFView.OnMouseDown event find the corresponding 'widget'
annotation.
This is very similar to code implementing link navigation in
MyPDFView.cs.
- Once you identify widget annotation, you can obtain its PDF.Field
using annot.GetWidgetField().
You can use read, write, or edit widget fields as illustrated in
'InteractiveForms' sample project (http://www.pdftron.com/net/
samplecode/InteractiveFormsTest.cs).
- You can then modify Form field:
a) pop-up a dialog-box asking the user to fill-out or modify the
field.
b) (a bit more complicated) start editing the form-filed in-place
calling periodically filed.RefreshAppearance() and pdfview.Update().
- After the user completes editing the form field, make sure to call
filed.RefreshAppearance() and pdfview.Update().
+++
Another (more complicated) approach is to disable annotation drawing
in PDFView class (i.e pdfview.SetDrawAnnotations(false)), and then use
GDI+/.NET API to draw widget text in OnPaint().
Then, when you are ready to save the document, you should call
doc.RefreshFieldAppearances().