• Automatically generate customized, personalized insurance-benefit booklets.
  
  
• Automatically generate customized, personalized employee-benefit booklets.
  
  
• Automatically generate customized, personalized training manuals.
  
  
• Automatically generate price quotes for products or services.
  
  
• Automatically generate invoices, statements, and other kinds of financial documents.
  
  
• Automatically add headers, footers, stamps, watermarks, page numbers/Bates numbers, or any text to existing documents.
  
  
• Automatically generate compliance documents required by government agencies.
  
  
• Automatically redact sensitive information from documents.
  
  
• Automatically apply digital signatures to documents.
  
  
• Automatically encrypt documents so that they can't be viewed and/or modified by unauthorized individuals.

An example

For our example, we'll suppose that your company sells interior doors that are used in houses and apartment buildings, and we'll suppose that you want your Web server to provide price quotes automatically to customers that fill out a form on your Web site.

You offer ten different door styles. Each door style comes in eight standard sizes, and your customers can select any of six stained or painted finishes.

First, of course, you'd need to have a page on your Web site that contains a data-entry form where the customer would fill in his or her name, e-mail address, phone number, etc.; the data-entry form would also allow the customer to specify the style, size, finish, and quantity for each kind of door that he or she is interested in.

After the customer fills in all of this information, the customer would click a button — and then your PDF-creation system would go to work behind the scenes and generate a PDF file that gives a detailed price breakdown and provides a grand total.

Overview of an implementation plan

When the customer clicks the "submit" button on your HTML form, control is passed to an ASP page containing VBScript code that you've written. In other words, the "action" attribute in the form tag is the URL for an ASP page on your Web server.

The first thing that your VBScript code does is convert the data entered by the customer into "XFDF" format and store it in a file. "What's XFDF?" you're wondering? No worries — XFDF is just a simple XML format, and we can provide free sample code that will make it easy for you to convert the data in your Form Collection or QueryString collection to XFDF format. If you'd like to see what an XFDF file looks like, click this link:

   http://www.citationsoftware.com/cam/cam_CsiNews_2007-12-19/XfdfData.xml.

The next thing that your VBScript code does is invoke a programmer's toolkit called "FDFMerge Lite." FDFMerge Lite will put the data from the XFDF file into a new PDF file. The new PDF file will be the price quote.

FDFMerge Lite will use an existing PDF file as the starting point for creating the new PDF file. The existing PDF file will contain your company's name, address, phone number, Web-site URL, logo, and perhaps some graphics to dress it up a bit. We'll call this the "master PDF file." You can create a master PDF file easily by using software tools that you probably already own (for example, Microsoft Word and Adobe Acrobat).

If you're using the FDFMerge Lite toolkit (as you would be if you follow this example), you'll also need to use Adobe Acrobat to draw form fields on the document. The form fields will designate where each type of information will be placed. Each form field will have a name that corresponds to the information that FDFMerge Lite will put in that field. For example: you might have a form field called First_Name; another form field might be called Last_Name; and so on.

If you were using a different toolkit, you might not need to create any form fields — but we'll stick with this paradigm for now, since our example relies on the FDFMerge Lite toolkit.

You'll keep the master PDF file on your server so that it will be available to FDFMerge Lite.

Like many of the programmer's toolkits that we sell, FDFMerge Lite has a command-line interface. You might not be accustomed to using programs with command-line interfaces when writing VBScript code. No problem — it's easy if you download a FREE software component called "DynuExec" (it's available at http://www.dynu.com/dynuexec.asp). DynuExec is simply a component that makes it very easy to use command-line programs from within an ASP page.

To instruct FDFMerge Lite to create the PDF file containing the price quote, all you need to do is write a tiny bit of code like this:

  Dim myexec
  Set myexec = Server.CreateObject("Dynu.Exec")
  myexec.execute("FDFMergeLiteApp Master.pdf -x XfdfData.xml -o Quote.pdf")
  Set myexec = Nothing

Master.pdf is the master PDF file, XfdfData.xml is the XFDF file, and Quote.pdf is the new PDF file that's going to be created.

In a split second, FDFMerge Lite creates the Quote.pdf file.

Now that you have the Quote.pdf file, you need to decide what you want to do with it. One thing you might want to do is display it in the customer's browser, which you can easily do with the following line of code:

  Response.Redirect "Quote.pdf"

(You'd specify the proper URL for the Quote.pdf file, of course.)

Or, you might want to e-mail the PDF file to the customer as an e-mail attachment. As you probably know, many inexpensive and easy-to-use software components are available that will allow you to write VBScript code to send e-mail messages with attachments.

Just one more thing: Now that FDFMerge Lite has created the Quote.pdf file, your VBScript code can delete the XFDF file, because it's not needed anymore. Here's the code to delete it:

  Dim fs
  Set fs = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
  fs.DeleteFile("XfdfData.xml")
  Set fs = Nothing

That's all there is to it!

Toolkit list

Here is the list:

• APCrypt ($475). Allows a programmer to encrypt, decrypt, and linearize PDF files. (To find out what "linearize" means in this context, go to this page on our Web site:
    http://www.CitationSoftware.com/faqPdfLinearization.htm.
  
  Our Web site also explains why you might want to encrypt a PDF file — go here: http://www.citationsoftware.com/SolutionFinder_PdfEncryptDecryptLinearize.htm and scroll down slightly from the top of the page.
  
  Note that many of the toolkits in this list allow you to deal with encryption, decryption, and linearization — APCrypt isn't the only toolkit that handles these things.
  
  
• AppendPDF ($945). Allows a programmer to create one PDF file from lists of several PDF files and/or lists of page ranges within PDF files.
  
  
• AppendPDF Pro ($2,895). Allows a programmer to create one PDF file from lists of several PDF files and/or lists of page ranges within PDF files; also makes it easy to add text or JPEG images to the new PDF file, to add dynamically generated page numbers, and more.
  
  
• APSplit ($945). A streamlined tool that makes it very easy for a programmer to extract a page or a range of pages from a PDF file.
  
  
• FDFMerge ($1,895). Allows a programmer to populate form fields in a PDF file with text, JPEG images, and individual PDF pages.
  
  
• FDFMerge Lite ($945). Allows a programmer to populate form fields in a PDF file with text.
  
  
• FormAssembler ($2,895). Similar to FDFMerge, FormAssembler allows a programmer to populate form fields in a PDF file with information — however, FormAssembler goes beyond FDFMerge in that it is possible with FormAssembler to generate extra PDF pages if there is too much data to fit on a particular PDF page.
  
  
• Quite Hot Imposing ($3,349). Makes it easy to integrate automated page-imposition operations into a document-production workflow. Non-programmers can use the hot-folder feature; programmers can use the command-line interface.
  
  
• SecurSign ($2,395). Allows a programmer to apply standard Acrobat Security features and digital signatures to PDF files dynamically. (A digital signature is used to certify the identity of the individual or institution that signed a document.)
  
  
• StampPDF Batch ($1,895). Allows a programmer to add text and JPEG Images to a single PDF file or to multiple PDF files — even if those PDF files don't contain form fields to hold the data. Use StampPDF Batch to add watermarks, to add page numbers (including Bates numbers), to add other header & footer information — or to add any text at all. You can control the font name, font size, font color, text orientation, word-wrapping, and more.

Here are some other PDF toolkits. These toolkits don't manipulate PDF files and don't create new PDF files; however, they do handle other useful tasks that are important in some PDF workflows.

• PDF2IMG (call for pricing). Allows a programmer to convert pages in PDF files to a variety of raster formats (BMP, EPS, GIF, JPG/JPEG, PNG or TIFF).
  
  
• Redax Enterprise Server (call for pricing). Allows a programmer to automate secure redaction of text and images.
  
  
• XpdfInfo SDK (starts at $235). Allows a programmer to extract page count, page sizes, and metadata from PDF files.
  
  
• XpdfPrint SDK (starts at $475). Allows a programmer to print PDF files automatically to any Windows printer.
  
  
• XpdfPS SDK (starts at $475). Allows a programmer to convert PDF files to PostScript format.
  
  
• XpdfRasterizer SDK (starts at $475). Allows a programmer to convert PDF pages to a variety of raster formats (BMP, TIFF, and others).
  
  
• XpdfText SDK (starts at $475). Allows a programmer to convert PDF files to plain text. In other words, it extracts text from PDF files.

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• LABEL ON A LETTER OPENER: "Caution: Safety goggles recommended."
  
  
• LABEL ON A BABY STROLLER THAT HAS A SMALL POUCH FOR BABY TOYS: "Do not put child in bag."
  
  
• LABEL ON A T-SHIRT: "Do not iron while wearing shirt."
  
  
• LABEL ON A TRACTOR: "Danger: Avoid Death."