Offline dataentry options

Question

Are there any options available to do offline surveys and questionnaires. Something in the line similar to Adobe Lifecycle that allows coded pdf files. Its costly and there are about 10-15 templates which will also add up to the license cost.

MSWord and MS-Excel are options but there could be users that do not have these installed or using MAC or LINUX systems. Also sometimes macros might be needed which some users or organization networks do not prefer.

Of course a website could be used but if something as good a editable pdf is available then its prefered as we need to have hard copies. More over it allows users to save it to their system, update anytime they prefer and then email it or print and fill it and fax it or even post it.

Wish if Adobe-Lifecycle was atleast half less costlier.

Answer 1

You may want to look at these options.

http://www.amgraf.com/

http://www.cardiff.com/products/liquidoffice_eforms/index.html - Will be more expensive than the first option.

These two solutions will handle designing, sending and collecting the data back from the PDF documents. If you want to collect data from a physical page then you will need to use an OCR based product as well.

For some technical background on Fillable PDF forms you may want to read http://www.amgraf.com/PDFiles/Acroforms2.pdf

Answer 2

Have a look at http://www.ddialliance.org/resources/tools which references http://quexml.sourceforge.net/