This section describes how to create forms with PDF Nomad.

Form field annotations allow the creation of interactive PDF forms which consist of a collection of fields for gathering information interactively from the user. PDF documents may contain an arbitrary number of fields appearing on any combination of pages, all of which together make up a single interactive form spanning the entire document.

You add form annotations by activating Annotate mode and selecting one of the options available under the Forms heading in the second popup from the annotation toolbar.

The Clear All Form Fields menu item under the Dynamic Annotations menu is useful to clear any and all text currently in form fields in the document, prior to exporting the document to PDF.

Form fields can be reset with a reset form action. Usually this action is assigned to a button widget annotation that is appropriately named.

You can highlight a form field annotation by underlining it, or by putting a frame around it. To do so select the annotation, then bringing up the contextual menu of the view and select one of the options under Frame Selected Annotations.

Properties of annotations are edited by double clicking the annotation (when in annotation mode). This brings up an inspector that shows the appropriate options for the annotation at hand.

Field names: Field names are used to allow multiple form field annotation objects to be independent of each other: form fields with the same field name always have the same text associated with that field name. When text is entered into one of the objects, the text associated with that field name is changed in all objects. To ensure unique text for a form field, you must give it a unique field name.

Form fields can have a maximum number of characters allowed in the field. By default form fields are set a Maximum Length value of 0, which indicates there is no limit. Any positive value will be used as the upper limit of allowable number of characters in the field.

It is possible to specify the font and font size and text alignment individually for each form field.

When a form field is being filled in by the user, the tab key will tab to the next field in the form. The tab order between form fields can be controlled by the form creator by dragging any field’s yellow sequence number (visible when in Edit Dynamic Annotations mode) to another field. This will swap the order of those two fields.

Text Fields

Text field annotation widgets allow users to enter text into form fields. Use the inspector to adjust the allowed input length and the font and alignment used for the text field and also to give the field a unique field name.

Button Widget Annotations

Button Widget Annotations provide user interactivity on a page of a PDF document. There are three types of buttons available: push button, radio button, and checkbox. Depending on the type of button there are different values that may be defined:

  1. The button’s caption. Available only for push buttons. This is the text displayed in the button.
  2. The field name. Available to all button styles.
  3. The selected value. This is the string that is associated with the selected state of a radio button or checkbox control. This text is not shown to the user, but is important when retrieving information on submitted forms. The off state text is always “off”.

For check boxes, to have the buttons behave independently they each need a unique field name.

For groups of radio buttons, each individual button in the group should have the same field name as the others, but a different selected value. This is required for the group of radio buttons to work correctly as a unit.

Push button annotations ignore their selected value They can perform actions when clicked. You can choose the action from the choices available in the push button annotation inspector. (Double click the annotation to bring up the inspector. See screen shot below.)