[reportlab-users] Fill In PDF Forms

[Andy Robinson]

timr at probo.com wrote:

> I consider myself a moderately studly ReportLab user, so I'm somewhat

> embarrassed that I don't know the answer to this.

> 

> Can ReportLab create fill-in-the-blank PDF forms, that allow the end user

> to type answers directly on the forms?  


No.

Or rather, only if you're extremely studly ;-)  We did add a little code 
to create annotations (canvas._addAnnotation and textAnnotation), and 
form widgets just require different entries in the dictionary, so if you 
studied the PDF spec and some examples, you could construct them; I 
recall playing with this once and getting an apparently editable form out.

If anyone wants an easy-ish hobby project they could probably figure
out what to do pretty quickly by looking at iText, which covers this
well and is open source....
   http://itextdocs.lowagie.com/tutorial/#part5


 > Can the commercial ReportLab

> products do that, or do I need a real copy of Acrobat?


The commercial products don't do this.  No one has asked, and in my 
opinion PDF is a final output format  ;-)


- Andy