Pre-built form presentation

[GManNAtl]

I have a standard government form that I would like to auto-populate that has boxes for each letter as many have seen.  The original PDF is not an active form, nor do I want to mess around with Acrobat.  Even if I did I think I would run into the same issue of putting one character in each box.  So, I have converted the PDF to a JPG cleaned it up / resized it and have it on a layout that I want to populate with FM data.  

 

Obviously, I can't just drop the fields on the layout because the text doesn't line up with the boxes.  I tried playing with font sizes etc., but without control over character spacing I can't line them up.  So, my idea was to create a custom function that would break the name down into a repeating field with each letter of the name in the repeating fields.  Then simply layout each character and show the appropriate repetition.  Here is the CF that I wrote :

 

 

Let ([

numOfCharacters = Length(yourtext);

firstChar = Left(yourtext ; 1);

remainingChars = Right(yourtext; Length(yourtext) - 1)

];

 

firstChar & ¶ &  If ( Length ( remainingChars) > 0 ; TextToRepeat (remainingChars) ; "" )

)

 

I then called this function from in a repeating calculation field passing the name into it.  The characters break out as expected, but just become list values in the first repetition. I have read many posts about reps, but can't get my head around populating them in this way, maybe it just can't be done?  

 

I suppose I could create a related table with a field for each character or something, but just wanted to keep it as clean as possible.  I am open to a completely different idea if you have done something like this in the past as well.

 

Thanks as always!

[doughemi]

How about a script:

 

Set Variable[$ctr; 1]

Loop

Set Field[Formfiller[$ctr]; Middle(Name; $ctr; 1)]

Set Variable[$ctr; $ctr+1]

Exit Loop If[$ctr>Length(Name)]

End Loop

 

Where Formfiller is your repeating field, and Name is the field containing the data to insert. Repeat as necessary for each field in the form.

[GManNAtl]

I think you may be correct that this is the easiest thing to do.  I use reps like anyone for layout design etc, but anytime I try to do anything like this which I feel is an appropriate use of them I just have issues!  The only thing I didn't disclose is that obviously there are more than just the name to populate, so there will be a bit of scripting to do before entering this layout.  The idea of just having info stored seemed more appealing, but hey I can script all of this in less time and probably save some hair at the same time.

 

Thanks doughemi,  

[doughemi]

You can use the same script over and over by passing it a parameter. If you pass a parameter formfield|datafield, you can parse that:

 

Set Variable[$param; Get(ScriptParameter)]

Set Variable[$pipepos; Position($param;"|";1;1)]

Set Variable[$formfield; Left($param; $pipepos - 1)]

Set Variable[$datafield; Right($param; Length($param) - $pipepos)]

 

Set Variable[$ctr; 1]

Loop

Set Field[$formfield[$ctr]; Middle($datafield; $ctr; 1)]

Set Variable[$ctr; $ctr+1]

Exit Loop If[$ctr>Length(datafield)]

End Loop

 

Then you could have an OnObjectExit script trigger on each  data field with the trigger script building the script parameter and passing it to the subscript above.