How to send a Form with content without losing the Form Design

.pdf or any other form is okay

[seofan]

My client wants his form accessible on his website. He wants it to collect the data, however, he also wants it to be transmitted as the form with the data in it. In other words, he doesn't want to lose the form design and structure.

Is is possible for someone to fill out, say a .pdf form and some type of script send the entire form with contents as an attachment?

After someone fills out the form, the form and for style should go via email. I'm thinking it "could" be an attachment just like attaching a .pdf file to email manually. I need a script that will do that in a browser.

Any help out there with this? Thanks!

[txbakers]

Yes, you could create PDF forms, which will send the layout as well as the information. You would need the full version of Acrobat to write these files.

You could send them through email if you want as well.

[jatar_k]

You could also just send an html email that looks like the page and plug in the values.

One question does come to mind though, why?

[seofan]

The client has to submit the forms to a government agency. If he takes the info down in a browser based form, he wants to avoid having to enter the information again. He wants it browser based so his agents in the field can access the forms from anywhere.

[jatar_k]

makes sense then.

What language script are we talking about?

[seofan]

We haven't specified a type of script in our discussions, but I am thinking javascript. Perl doesn't strike me, for some reason, to be able to accomplish this type of issue but I do not know Perl/cgi..

[jatar_k]

I did a few searches on google but didn't really find much.

A search on hotscripts brought up a few things but you would probably have to look at them yourself to see if they are workable. The things I found seem to be either perl or java. Maybe a search on adobe might be the way to go?

[txbakers]

I have a solution for this problem which works very well.

I have a plain jane input form to collect the data. When the user clicks submit, they get to see the form completely filled out and all they need to do is print from the browser.

This saves everyone time - the form recipient has a completed form without HTML input boxes, the user doesn't have to wade through a pre-defined form to find the input boxes, and I don't any technology other than HTML to render the form.

Works well.

[seofan]

thanks everyone - It also occurred to me over lunch that it is possible to email the .pdf document direct from the reader. I don't know yet if you can fill out a form and then email it - whether the fields will remain intact or if just the form gets emailed. I'm going to test it out when I have time this afternoon.

If I find any other solutions to this type of request, I'll come back and post it for your reference. Thanks again.