Dynamically Generate Editable PDF

Question

Is there a way to create an editable PDF programmatically? By editable, I mean you can click in a text area and type in your name, that kind of thing.

I'm using Ruby and have found PrinceXML and Princely to be nice projects. I'm wondering if they could do that?

Answer 1

Prince doesn't mention forms in the documentation, and renders forms as static drawings, so I doubt it.

pdfTeX can do it with the hyperref package. Here's a tutorial.

Example:

\usepackage{hyperref}
\begin{Form}
\TextField[backgroundcolor={1 1 0},value=can do forms]{hyperref}
\end{Form}

It looks like this:

(Of course, then you're using TeX instead of whatever reports library you like. I'm sure there's an alternative.)