Techno-guys Please Apply Within

[Halgar]

Is anyone familiar with the creation of .pdf files? I need to insert dynamic files (i.e. calculators ) into .pdf files that I'm creating. Is this possible, and how?

Thanks for the assistance.

[Tadracket]

Never saw anyone do that with a pdf
If it works out, let me know.
Why are you using pdf?

[Halgar]

Because it's a standardized format for electronic books, the reader is free, and nearly everyone has it on their computer. I hope there is a means to doing this, it will make the book I'm working on extremely unique.

[mikedealer]

not possible with pdf's, but ive done it with Flash and gave people a link to a website or the flash file itself to run locally. I made a mortgage calculator once for a company and made it a flash file. Of course it could be done with some HTML Programming also, but might require some sort of scripted backend or something, i just went the flash route and it worked fine. i can find the links if you wanna see the capabilities

[Tadracket]

You could use excel. Microsoft offers free viewer now and excel is capable of just about anything, with a little work.

[Halgar]

If this helps, supposedly there is a way to do it using java script. Looking at the code for the webpage it uses a script.

Mike, we're working of developing a website that will include pages that have the calculators and other dynamic items.

This is the code for one of the calculators:

Code: Select all

<CENTER>
<table style="width: 200px; border: 1px solid #253460; padding: 0; background-color: #dddddd;">

<TR>
<TD colspan=3 style="text-align: center; background-color: #253460; font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans serif; font-size: 12px; color: #FFFFFF;"><B>General Information Calculator</B></TD>
</TR>	

<TR>

<TD STYLE="font-size: 100%;">			
<FORM NAME="generalcalculator" ACTION="" METHOD="GET">
<TR><TD STYLE="width: 70%;"><B>Type of grain:</B></TD><TD></TD><TD><SELECT NAME="graintype" ID="graintype" length="10"><OPTION VALUE="6">Sorghum<OPTION VALUE="5">Rice<OPTION VALUE="4">Wheat<OPTION VALUE="3">Barley<OPTION SELECTED VALUE="2">Corn<OPTION VALUE="1">Other</SELECT></TD></TR><P>

<TR><TD STYLE="width: 70%;"><B>Size of boiler:</B></TD><TD STYLE="width: 30%;"> <INPUT TYPE="text" ID="boilersize" NAME="boilersize" VALUE="190" SIZE="4"></TD><TD><SELECT NAME="boilermetric" ID="boilermetric"><OPTION SELECTED VALUE="2">Gallons<OPTION VALUE="1">Liters</SELECT></TD></TR><P>
<TR><TD STYLE="width: 70%;"><B>Fermentation percentage:</B></TD><TD STYLE="width: 30%;"> <INPUT TYPE="text" ID="fermentpercent" NAME="fermentpercent" VALUE="17" SIZE="4"></TD><TD><SELECT NAME="fermentmetric" ID="fermentmetric"><OPTION SELECTED VALUE="2">Percent</SELECT></TD></TR><P>

<TR><TD style="text-align: center; background-color: #253460; font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans serif; font-size: 12px; color: #FFFFFF;" colspan=3><B>Results:</B></TD></TR>
<TR><TD colspan=1><B>Water to begin with:</B></TD><TD><INPUT TYPE="text" ID="dilutesize" NAME="dilutesize" SIZE="4"></TD><TD><SELECT NAME="dilutemetric" ID="dilutemetric"><OPTION SELECTED VALUE="1">Gallons<OPTION VALUE="2">Liters</SELECT></TD></TR>
<TR><TD colspan=1><B>Weight of grain to begin with:</B></TD><TD><INPUT TYPE="text" ID="feedstocksize" NAME="feedstocksize" SIZE="4"></TD><TD><SELECT NAME="dextrinmetric" ID="dextrinmetric"><OPTION SELECTED VALUE="1">Pounds<OPTION VALUE="2">Kilograms</SELECT></TD></TR>

<TR><TD colspan=3><CENTER><INPUT TYPE="button" NAME="calculate" Value="Calculate!" onClick="BoilerText(this.form)"></CENTER></TD></TR>

</FORM>

</TD>
</TR>
</TABLE>
</CENTER>

[danglenode]

HI -

As far as I know that should be doable, I think more so with Acrobat 8 Professional but I am not 100% sure about the process or if it can be done. I would think if you can place it into say a word file and have the calculator stuff work it would work within a pdf. You may need to actually code the buttons and create form elements to calculate what you need. I would try to create a form and have the form calculate the items.

Hope this helps, and let us know what you came up with.

[Halgar]

HI -

As far as I know that should be doable, I think more so with Acrobat 8 Professional but I am not 100% sure about the process or if it can be done. I would think if you can place it into say a word file and have the calculator stuff work it would work within a pdf. You may need to actually code the buttons and create form elements to calculate what you need. I would try to create a form and have the form calculate the items.

Hope this helps, and let us know what you came up with.

Do what? With the huh? And it will huh? I don't know anything about Adobe products, though my partner is fairly proficient at manipulating .pdf's to suit our needs. I use Corel Wordperfect for desktop publishing, once everything is just right, the the partner converts it to a pdf document.

[SoloGraphix]

Since Adobe now produces Dreamweaver, you might be able to save an HTML file out of the new dreamweaver as a PDF. Just a guess though.

[mikedealer]

word perfect! yuck loL, only people i see using that nowadays is lawyers hehe

honestly i dont think acrobat 8 pro has any more features than 6-7 did, im looking at the new specs and i dont see anything at all for dynamic content.

there are a billion different calculator online and 90% of the time you can view the source and snag the code, and worst comes to worse they will save the code in a .js file and restrict permission to download it, but you can pull it from your temporary internet files and steal it that way lol. only reason i used flash was because Mac browsers were "crashing" when browsing with safari when they tried to calculate, dont ask me why lol

[Halgar]

Since Adobe now produces Dreamweaver, you might be able to save an HTML file out of the new dreamweaver as a PDF. Just a guess though.

I don't see "pdf" as an option in the save file menu. There are some active content files, however, that Adobe may recognize. I won't know without looking at the readers abilities.

word perfect! yuck loL, only people i see using that nowadays is lawyers hehe

honestly i dont think acrobat 8 pro has any more features than 6-7 did, im looking at the new specs and i dont see anything at all for dynamic content.

there are a billion different calculator online and 90% of the time you can view the source and snag the code, and worst comes to worse they will save the code in a .js file and restrict permission to download it, but you can pull it from your temporary internet files and steal it that way lol. only reason i used flash was because Mac browsers were "crashing" when browsing with safari when they tried to calculate, dont ask me why lol

Wordperfect is better than MicroSux Word. There are other editors that might work a little better than WP, but they don't have "reveal codes", and anyone who does any amount of writing really needs this feature.

I snagged the code from the page that has the calculators I want and am saving that as an HTML file. Nifty trick for stuff you want to keep.


Thanks for all the suggestions so far, keep them coming guys, I greatly appreciate the help.

[terry.sc]

Acrobat is just a very useful document container format designed so that the document looks identical whatever operating system it is viewed on. The advantages of using pdfs is that you can control the permissions so you can control what the end user can do with it, such as print it or copy the text.

Pdfs are just static pages and they have no dynamic capabilities at all.

For something that can build a calculator in that acts as a standalone single document the ideal solution would probably be Adobe Director, but it's probably a bit over the top for what you want to use, although something built in Flash should be able to be run on just about any browser as its use is more widespread than Acrobat Reader.

[Halgar]

Pdfs are just static pages and they have no dynamic capabilities at all.

You're not helping, Terry! J/K

[Halgar]

New question:

If you have one cup of antifreeze solution that is say 40%, and you add 2 cups of water, what is the resultant strength of the antifreeze solution?

What is the formula for said calculation?

[JK Racing]

1 cup = 8 oz

40 % of 8 oz = 3.2 oz antifreeze.

16 oz water + 4.8 oz water = 20.8 oz water to 3.2 oz antifreeze.

so 3.2 / 20.8 = .15 or 15%

I couldnt give you a formula if my life depended on it...been out of school waaayyyy to long for that.