Developer(s) | Adobe Systems |
---|---|
Stable release | |
Operating system | Windows |
Type | Form Designer |
License | |
Website | www.adobe.com/products/server/adobedesigner/ |
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Adobe LiveCycle Designer is a forms authoring tool published by Adobe Systems, intended as a one-stop design tool to render XML forms as PDF or HTML files.
History[edit]
Designer began as a component of PerForm, an Electronic forms software package created by Delrina. Delrina was bought by Symantec in 1995, which subsequently sold its Electronic Forms division to JetForm in 1996. JetForm (later renamed Accelio) was purchased by Adobe in 2002. Adobe ended the support of the Accelio version of the product in 2004.
In late 2003, Designer was redesigned and released as the Adobe Forms Designer.
In March 2004, Adobe shipped Adobe Designer 6.0 for use with Adobe's Intelligent Document Platform and with version 6 of the Adobe Acrobat software. This release included support for creating dynamic forms with data propagated by the Adobe Form Server, support for the XML Data Package (XDP) file format, as well as importing existing forms from Adobe Acrobat, Adobe Output Designer, Microsoft InfoPath and Microsoft Word.
In December 2004, Adobe released Designer as Adobe LiveCycle Designer 7.0 as part of the LiveCycle suite of products. This release added the ability to create dynamic forms that do not require the Adobe Form Server for dynamic features, tools for creating Email submissions, and the Paper Forms barcode tool. Designer 7.0 is bundled with Adobe Acrobat Professional 7.0 (on Microsoft Windows only) and available as a stand-alone product. In December 2005, Adobe released Adobe LiveCycle Designer 7.1 as a stand-alone upgrade. Acrobat 8 shipped in November 2006 bundled with a new version of LiveCycle Designer (version 8).
LiveCycle Designer was included with Adobe Acrobat Pro Version 9. It is included in Adobe Acrobat X Pro as Adobe LiveCycle Designer ES2, but it is sold separately since Adobe Acrobat XI Pro. However, owners of a prior licensed version of Acrobat Professional who qualify for and purchase an upgrade to Adobe Acrobat XI Professional also qualify for a [http://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/policy-pricing/upgrade-livecycle-designer-acrobat-xi.html free upgrade to LiveCycle Designer ES4.
The core support for Adobe LiveCycle ES4 ended March 2018. Adobe suggests upgrading to Adobe Experience Manager Forms.[1]
Features[edit]
- Designer forms are structured documents with a hierarchical structure that can be converted into XML. This structure can include structure from XML Schema and example XML files.
- Designer forms can be saved as PDF files or XDP files. XDP files are used by the Adobe LiveCycle Form Server to render files to PDF or HTML as needed.
- PDF forms made in Designer can be designed to be dynamic (changing layout in response to data propagated from other sources), interactive (capable of accepting user input) or both. As of Designer 7.0, dynamic features of these PDF forms can be manipulated by the Adobe Form Server during the rendering process, or by the Adobe Acrobat/Acrobat Reader client during viewing.
- Designer allows JavaScript to be embedded into a form, allowing programmatic changes to the form layout as well as communication with various data sources (SOAP, OLEDB).
- Besides JavaScript, Designer includes a proprietary scripting language called FormCalc (in Adobe LiveCycle Designer ES2).
Limitations[edit]
- Designer works on a Windows only platform.
- Viewing PDF forms made with Designer requires Acrobat/Adobe Reader 6.0.2 or later.
- PDF forms made with Designer cannot be edited in Adobe Acrobat, only viewed.
- Some features of Designer forms are dependent on 'user rights' activated through the Adobe LiveCycle Reader Extensions server product. This applies to all PDFs, even ones created with Acrobat and other 3rd party vendors.
- Acrobat has been able to make forms since Acrobat 3.0, and there are some third party tools which can work with them in addition to Adobe software. However, these are a type of form now called acroforms. Forms created by Designer are an incompatible type (commonly XFA forms) and are not in general compatible with existing non-Adobe software. Owners of Acrobat 7.0 Professional have the choice of making acroforms directly, or using the bundled (on Windows) copy of Designer to create XFA forms.
- When a form object is bound to an xmlnode, the value from that node may only be extracted once. If several objects share the same binding, only the first object will receive the node value when the form is processed.
- There are limitations in the ability of Designer to parse HTML and display it in a form; Designer cannot handle a number of fundamental tags, including ordered list, unordered list and tables. (see https://web.archive.org/web/20150706161930/http://partners.adobe.com/public/developer/en/xml/xfa_spec_2_8.pdf page 1081 for supported tags)[citation needed]
- The program has had a constant issue with users being able to set the tabbing order correctly. The system often reorders the entire form causing the user to have to start over. This problem has never been corrected but can be reduced by the user ensuring every field has a unique name (i.e. Yes/No Radio 1, Yes/No Radio 2, etc.).[2]
- While Livecycle Designer may be the best tool available for Windows users to build dynamic pdf forms, it is known to have a lot of bugs and Adobe does not give it the level of support that it does other applications. Due to this, it does require a learning curve to both reduce and effectively handle the different bugs.[3]
References[edit]
- ^https://blogs.adobe.com/livecycle/2015/09/five-reasons-to-upgrade-from-livecycle-to-experience-manager-forms.html
- ^https://acrobatusers.com/forum/forms-livecycle-designer/tab-sequence-will-not-order-correctly/
- ^http://forms.stefcameron.com/bug-list/
External links[edit]
- Enhanced Adobe XML Architecture Supports XML/PDF Form Designer and XML Data Package (XDP), Cover Pages, July 15. 2003
Retrieved from 'https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Adobe_LiveCycle_Designer&oldid=925028476'
Ah me, it’s nice to be back. A few of you know me from my work on SDN, or before, when I was with SAP Consulting or SAP Education. Well, I’m on a six-month assignment with the SAP NetWeaver Composition Environment team in Walldorf right now, and part of my job has been to get back in – to do the deep dive – back in to SAP technologies… It’s nice to be back.
What have I been doing? Many things. But to start…
I’ve spent some time figuring out how to download and assemble the different pieces that enable you to use SAP Interactive Forms by Adobe within your composite applications. While this is for Composition Environment 7.1 SP1, I’m assured the procedure will be very similar for the upcoming SP3 release. I should also be clear – these steps go toward setting up a comprehensive development system for the SAP NetWeaver Composition Environment. This adds another piece to that environment.
So, Why?
The user interface layer of a composite application created using SAP’s Composition Environment should support easy adoption. That is, it should enable someone to do their part in a collaborative business process using tools that are familiar and easy to use. Sometimes that means emulating the forms (online or offline) that people normally use to complete their work.
SAP Interactive Forms by Adobe are a convenient way to add forms to collaborative processes where paper-based processes need to be replaced or facilitated, or where certain tasks are executed offline. Once in place, you can use SAP Interactive Forms by Adobe to create forms as callable objects that can be placed into your guided procedures. Integrated forms become part of the flow.
So, How?
First of all, I’m describing how to add ADS to an existing CE development environment, not a productive environment, in this blog… Furthermore, I’m focused on the additional steps to add ADS – I’m not covering the basics of CE installation and configuration itself.
So, that said, here are the broad steps for extending the SAP NetWeaver Composition Environment to include SAP Interactive Forms by Adobe:
CE Development Server Configuration
- Install the Additional Scenario – Adobe Document Services
- Apply the CE_composition_environment_development_full configuration template
- Configure Service Startup to Support ADS
- Set up the ADS Group, User, and Authentication
- Install Adobe Credentials
CE Developer Desktop Configuration
- Install Adobe LiveCycle Designer
- Test the Installation
You’ll find the SAP documentation for doing this work in two main places. Here, in CE Master Guide, and here, in the SAP Library. I also owe a huge shout-out and respect to Abdul Razack of the SAP NetWeaver RIG in the Americas. He has truly filled in all the blanks on this topic.
So, to begin. https://weblogs.sdn.sap.com/cs/blank/edit/wlg/
Install the Additional Scenario – Adobe Document Services
The Composition Environment installation media (regrettable not the SDN preview version) includes installation packages for two additional scenarios – Adobe Document Services (ADS) and Voice. You start the installation of the ADS scenario by double-clicking the install.exe file in CompositionTools directory under ntintel:
Select the “Adobe Document Services – Add-on Installation” and continue:
The installation will run for up to an hour depending on the characteristics of the system on which you’re installing… https://weblogs.sdn.sap.com/cs/blank/edit/wlg/
Apply the CE_development_full Configuration Template
In my experience, installing ADS reconfigures your CE runtime environment to support only ADS… Trying to reach the portal in that environment gets a “Service stopped” or “Service unavailable” error, which is kind of disconcerting. The fix is simple, fortunately. Open up the config tool and reset the configuration template to the CE_composition_environment_development_full template. This switches everything (including ADS) back on. Here, take a look:
Before:
During:
And after:
https://weblogs.sdn.sap.com/cs/blank/edit/wlg/https://weblogs.sdn.sap.com/cs/blank/edit/wlg/
Configure Service Startup to Support ADS
The Master Guide tells us we must do this to enable ADS in our CE development environment: Stop your CE application server using the SAP MMC, and then set the “Log-on as” value to Local System Account for the two CE server-related Services (SAPCE1_00 and SAPCE1_01) you see in the Windows Services console.
Restart the services, and then restart your application server.
Set up the ADS Group, User, and Authentication
Next task is to set up access and authorizations for ADS services on your Java server. Do this by creating an ADSCallers Group to which you assign the SAP_ADSCALLER role, and create an ADSUser login account that is assigned to this group.
Set up the ADSCallers Group:
Set up the ADSUser Login:
You’ll use this user to set up the logical port through which ADS operates.
Open the NetWeaver Administrator using https://:/nwa, and navigate to Configuration Management > Infrastructure Management > Web Services Configuration.
Search for the Proxy Definition DestinationSI and manually create a new logical port for that destination.
Name the new port ConfigPort_Document, configure its endpoint WSDL as https://localhost:50100/inspection.wsil, and configure it to use the ADSuser username and password you created earlier in this step.
Install Adobe Credentials
As the last step of the CE-server-side configuration, you must add credentials from Adobe to your implementation to enable its use. You can download a trial set of credentials from the CE download page on SDN (see step 12), or follow the instructions in SAP Note 736902 to get full credentials. The credentials are delivered in a .pfx file with accompanying password, and the files are time-constrained. When your credentials expire, your ADS services will too!
Unpack the credentials files and place them in ADS’s credentials directory, shown below:
Then return to the NetWeaver Administrator and navigate to Adobe Document Services:
Add a new credentials object, alias ReaderRights, into which you load the credentials file and password (the password can be found in the .txt file in the credentials directory):
The credentials upload will look like this:
Save, and you’ve completed the CE-server-side installation and configuration of Adobe Document Services. So, what’s next? Installing and configuring the client-side pieces for ADS, of course.
Install Adobe LiveCycle Designer
As SAP Note 962763 explains, you may already have Adobe LiveCycle Designer on your desktop, installed by the Designer Installer or as part of SAP GUI or the SAP NetWeaver Developers Studio. You can tell by looking for “SAP Interactive Forms” in Add or Remove Programs launched from the Control Panel. If you do have an earlier version, it must be uninstalled befor you install version 7.1.
The media for Adobe LiveCycle Designer can be downloaded from the SAP Service Marketplace if you have an s-number there. Search for it in the software download center under Installations and Upgrades.
The installation then is simple. Unzip the media into a directory and double-click the ALDsetup.exe file:
With this, your CE development environment, both server-side and client-side, are extended with Adobe Document Services. Congratuations! But then, how can you know?
Testing the Installation
You test the installation by creating and using forms as Callable Objects in your guided procedures. A simple test is to invoke Interactive Forms tools within the design time, as follows:
Use the Template Creation tools to invoke the Adobe LiveCycle Designer:
And bang in your forms:
Once you’ve mapped the fields of your forms to the input parameters of the services you’re using, you’ll be using SAP Interactive forms by Adobe as full interface elements within your composite applications. Cool!