About PDF forms

Scorpio lets you incorporate interactive PDF forms in your application.
You can extract data submitted from the PDF forms, populate form fields from an XML data file or a database, and embed PDF forms in PDF documents created in ColdFusion.

ColdFusion supports interactive forms created with Adobe Acrobat forms and with LiveCycle.
In Adobe Acrobat 6.0 or earlier, you can create interactive Acroforms. Using Adobe LiveCycle
Designer, which is provided with Adobe Acrobat Professional 7.0 and later, you can generate
interactive forms.

The type of form is significant because it affects how you manipulate the data in ColdFusion.
For example, you cannot use an XML data file generated from a form created in Acrobat to
populate a form created in LiveCycle, and vice versa, because the XML file formats differ
between the two types of forms.

Forms created in Acrobat use the XML Forms Data Format (XFDF) file format. Forms
created in LiveCycle use the XML Forms Architecture (XFA) format introduced in Acrobat
and Reader 6.

The file format also affects how you prefill fields in a form from a data source, because you must
map the data structure as well as the field names.

The use of JavaScript also differs based on the context. The JavaScript Object Model in a PDF
file differs from the HTML JavaScript Object Model. Consequently, scripts written in
HTML JavaScript do not apply to PDF files. Also, JavaScript differs between forms created in
Acrobat and those created in LiveCycle: scripts written in one format do not work with other.