Automatic PDF Form

[David Artman]

Goal: Upon generating a PDF, checkboxes appear next to each paragraph of
a particular type, aligned right against the page margin. Can not use
autonumbering, because the paragraph tag already has numbers. Can not
manually create them in the PDF post-distillation, because we're talking
about hundred of steps needing checkboxes--WAY too time-consuming.

I am currently considering this method, using only FM 8 and Acrobat 9
Pro:

  1) Manually place a checkbox glyph into a text frame within an anchor
frame that is set to "Run Into Paragraph" and aligned right.
  2) Add some kind of label within the text frame (e.g., "Y", "OK" or
"Done").
  3) Copy-and-paste the anchor for that frame at then end of every a new
para of that type.
  4) Distill to PDF.
  5) Open PDF in AcroPro.
  6) Let the Form Wizard detect the labelled checkboxes and auto-create
them.

Works, but error-prone in many ways:

  a) Writers forget to add the manually-placed frame.
  b) TONS of other stuff can be detected as "form fields"; and their
auto-created fields have to be deleted (could be more work than adding
fields manually post-PDFing!).

Ideas? I suspect there's a plug-in that will automatically do this, if
setup right initially (or will do it wherever a special type of marker
is placed--"half automatic" so to speak).

Thanks in advance;
David Artman
david artman designs