Create a smart PDF document with Scribus

16. Export to PDF
You should now have a functional form document on your hands. Let’s export it as a PDF document and test its functionality. At the top of the Scribus interface you will see a button titled ‘Save as PDF’. Hit that button. A ‘Save As PDF’ window will pop up. Pick a location and filename for your document. Scribus might pop up some errors; it should be okay to hit the Ignore button. Under the General tab, choose PDF 1.3 under compatibility. You don’t really need to tinker with any other options. Hit Save. Your PDF form document should be ready to go.

17. Open the PDF
Open the PDF document you just saved using Adobe’s Acrobat Reader. Acrobat Reader is available for free on Linux, Windows and the Mac. Unfortunately most other PDF readers don’t seem to support the ‘smart’ features we worked into our PDF. Once the document is open, enter some data into the text fields. Hit the Submit button when done. Acrobat Reader will now either ask you if you want to send the data by email using the installed client or using a web client. At this point, pick the option you prefer. If you choose the web client option, the data you entered will be saved into an FDF file on your local hard drive. However, if you choose the email client option, a mail containing the FDF file attachment will be launched and you can hit the Send button to send the data to the email address programmed into the PDF document.

18. Form validation
Now that we have covered functionality, we can look at making our PDF document smarter and prettier. Let’s add some basic form validation to it. Using form validation, we will have the document check the user’s input to make sure she doesn’t leave any important fields such as Name and Email Address empty. Right-click on the form next to the Name tab. Go to Field Properties. Select the Validate tab and choose the ‘Custom validate script’ option. Hit Edit and enter the code shown in the screenshot here. Go to File>Save and Exit, then hit the OK button. Do this for the Email Address box as well. Export the document once again and test the validation.

19. Pretty up your document
Now that you have a functional document with some basic form validation, you can spend some extra time on making it look a bit nicer. Throw in a nice background colour, a couple of images such as your logo, and format the field tags with a nice-looking font and colour. To insert an image, go to Insert>Image Frame in the main menu. In a little time you should have a form document on your hands which is also easy on the eye.

20. Send the document
Once you are done with all of the above, export a final copy of the document as a PDF and email the document to your clients. Once they receive it and fill it out and hit the Submit button, the data they entered will be sent back to you by email. You can use Acrobat Reader to read this data or even import it directly into a spreadsheet application. Export the document once again and you’re in business.