JavaScripting with PDFs continues to grow as developers and end-user companies build custom workflows with little-known, under-publicized capabilities of PDFs.With the trashed economy forcing companies to tighten belts and curtail seminars and travel, some technical educators are taking to the Web to impart their knowledge to students remotely.
Software author, trade-show speaker and JavaScript guru Thom Parker took to the Web last month by launching PDFScripting.com, porting his popular live presentations to video courses and best-practices documents.
Some of the content is free, and some isn't. His company, WindJack Solutions launched the new site, he says, because while many companies can't afford to send employees to conferences and seminars, the demand for PDF JavaScripting continues to grow.
Not many people use this little-publicized capability of PDF, Parker says, but when government agencies and private enterprises create paperless workflows, they quickly realize they need something to customize their PDFs to fit into their data processes.
"People today expect their electronic documents to be interactive and dynamic," Parker says. "When you ask, 'How do you do that in PDF?' it almost invariably leads to scripting. So, it seems to us
that more people are trying to find out how to implement interactive
features."
Most people writing custom scripts for PDFs are customizing forms data workflow, Parker says. Getting information back from customers or internal users of electronic forms are the number-one tasks users need to script into their PDFs, followed by tasks like numbers calculating and data formatting.
Adobe's promotion of PDF usage for forms in its LiveCycle enterprise server apps probably is getting Acrobat end-users at smaller organizations to think about how they can also electronic forms in more efficient and robust ways than just out-of-the-box applications. On the typical Acrobat end-user's scale, one way to accomplish that is with stable JavaScripts.
Parker says, however, that WindJack is getting more and more requests for JavaScripting that doesn't involve forms, too.
"PDF isn't just plain paper, and navigation is the most important non-form feature that any document can have," he says. "Beyond this, we get a surprising number of requests for information on
custom print and save buttons. Even in a paperless world, printing never seems to go away."
While scripting nerds are welcome at PDFScripting.com, its hosts aim to serve beginners, too. Parker says that all kinds come to WindJack for scripting advice; he guesses that the economy is driving some of that. As layoffs within companies force a new person to take over the PDF workflow, they need to get up to speed on how JavaScripts help their particular enterprise's data flow—and how to edit or extend those scripting processes.
"We get a full cross-section of users, from absolute novices to experienced programmers," Parker says. "The largest group, though, sits right in the middle: People who aren't programmers, but that do know something about scripting—not necessarily Acrobat scripting, but general principles."
