---

This website is no longer being maintained.
Please see the latest information at our new site.

---

FORMagic/400 PDF - Using Landscape Forms


VERY SPECIAL PROCEDURES ARE GENERALLY REQUIRED WHEN USING LANDSCAPE FORMS IN FORMagic/400 PDF FILES.

FORMagic/400 PDF fully supports landscape forms. However, successful usage often requires that a very special procedure be followed to create them.

Landscape forms require that settings be made very consistently in multiple areas during forms design and development of FORMagic/400 PDF applications. FMTEST01.EXE provides a package of test files to illustrate the required procedures. (Some of the files are applicable only to FORMagic/400 applications addressed in a separate procedure.) Download the package (58k) into an empty folder, then click on it to restore the individual files.

FORMagic/400 PDF was initially designed and tested to support forms captured with Acrobat Writer v4 and later. Recently, Adobe made major structural changes in Acrobat Writer v7. These changes make it impossible for FORMagic/400 PDF to read v7 output files and perform the necessary conversions to generate overlay forms for use with AS/400 applications. Thus, Acrobat Writer v7, and later versions, should not be used to generate any forms. We recommend the very popular, reliable, and free CutePDF Writer instead.

The special procedures described below are generally not necessary when Acrobat Writer v4, v5, and v6 are used to generate PDF forms. They are definitely required when forms are generated with CutePDF. Acrobat treats a given page size in either portrait or landscape orientation as being the same. CutePDF does not. This difference causes the need for these special procedures.

It should be emphasized that all final output production PDF files created by FORMagic/400 PDF, using landscape forms created by either Acrobat or CutePDF, operate normally and identially when viewed in Acrobat Reader. Thus, these special procedures apply only during the initial forms development process, and not with daily usage of production output PDF files.

Summary of Procedures for Landscape PDF forms:

• Acrobat v7: Do not use for any forms, portrait or landscape.
• Portrait forms: Use normally; no special procedures apply (except do not use Acrobat v7).
• Acrobat v4-v6: Standard procedures, similar to those documented for using landscape forms with FORMagic/400, generally apply. If failure occurs, try these special procedures.
• CutePDF: Always use these special procedures.
• Other products: Try the normal procedures. If they do not work, try these special procedures.

Special Procedure - One-time Setup for Landscape Form Sizes:

The first requirement is to create a special Windows form size for all landscape forms so CutePDF can properly recognize each orientation. For Windows XP, go to Start, Settings, Printers and Faxes, File, Server Properties. Scroll to Letter Rotated, highlight it, and click Create a New Form. Edit the name to show Letter LS. Width 11, Height 8.5, and all Margins of zero with English units should already be specified. Note that a landscape form must always have a larger width then height! Click Save Form.

That's all; but you must do it once for every landscape form size you will be using, ie Legal LS, Ledger LS, etc. The same setup principles apply to all sizes, including Metric and special. If you have a special form size, create it from a similar form being very certain to specify all values correctly. They must exactly match the sizes you will use in Word (or other products) when forms are designed. Word allows you to use the portrait version and simply specify landscape printing. CutePDF does not!

Special Procedure - Designing Landscape Forms:

Thousands of products can be used to design forms. We will describe the required procedures assuming Word is being used. They will be similar for other products, but you may have to use "creativity" while learning how to apply them. We will help if we can, but the need for these procedures may make it difficult, or even impossible, to use some products for creating landscape forms. Whether you are designing your landscape form in Word or another product, go through these procedures using Word and our samples first. Make certain you understand the special requirements completely, especially before using another product that we are unfamiliar with and will have extreme difficulty supporting.

Example files are provided to illustrate the special procedures and to allow quick experimentation.

• LTEST01.DOC: view Word settings for the "master document" and/or use it as a test document.
• LTEST02.PDF: the corresponding one page PDFF Form File created with CutePDF.
• LTEST02.HP*: corresponding PDF form files for the AS/400. They allow you to bypass form design and generation and quickly see a final completed PDF application. Simply copy these files to the AS/400 FMAGIC folder, complete the upload in Work With Overlays, and use the Quick Test procedure below.
• LTEST02P.PDF: corresponding final output production PDF file containing print data (simulated by using the Print Key) merged with form LTEST02.

Always copy our sample file LTEST01.DOC to another folder and use it for your initial testing and experimentation. Never use or change our original test file. You may need to refer to it later to see the proper settings! LTEST01.DOC is equivalent to the "real" landscape form you will design later for production use. The procedures here assume you will be creating a landscape form on letter size paper (ie, you will be using the Windows form Letter LS created above). If you are using another page size, substitute the appropriate Windows LS form wherever Letter LS is mentioned.

• First, develop your landscape form in Word normally. Use the regular settings for a landscape form, ie page size Letter and orientation Landscape. Print and tweak the form until it is finished completely. Upload it to the AS/400 and test it with the "quick test" procedure described for FORMagic/400 landscape applications. Finish the form before proceeding to make a PDF form! The ready-to-use LTEST01.DOC sample form illustrates this step. Note: If you are creating a multi-page form set so you can use different forms on different pages of the PDF file, you cannot mix landscape and portrait pages; all pages in a FORMagic/400 PDF file must use the same orientation.

• Copy the "completed regular form" LTEST01.DOC, to another document LTEST02.DOC. Do steps 1 and 2 every time you make changes in the form itself. Otherwise, you will most likely corrupt your form as you move back and forth between the "regular" settings needed to print from Word and the "special" settings needed by CutePDF.

• From this point forward, if you need to "change the form", restart at step 1! The steps below apply only to the "copied" document; and they are used only to meet the needs of CutePDF.

• This step makes all the critical changes needed by CutePDF. Experience may allow you to employ shortcuts to bypass some or all of the steps above, but you must understand what is being done here in order to handle landscape forms correctly, especially if you will be using another forms design product.

  Open LTEST02.DOC.

  Select File, Page Setup, and record all Margin and Paper Size settings.

  Select File, Print, change the printer to CutePDF, then select Properties, Portrait Orientation, Advanced, and finally change the paper size to Letter LS. Click OK several times to save your settings. Back at the Print screen, select Close, not OK, so you will not print yet.

  Select File, Page Setup, Paper Size. Specify Portrait Orientation and Letter LS Paper Size. You may have to make these selections several times because Word may change one as you change the other. The final result must show Letter LS, Width 11, Height 8.5, and Portrait orientation. When printing to a physical printer, you would normally choose Letter page size and Landscape orientation, but Letter LS and Portrait are required for CutePDF! Changing from normal landscape settings to the special CutePDF portrait settings may cause Word to alter your margin settings. Select Margins and correct them if necessary. This is why you should never generate PDF forms from your "master" document. At some point, you will corrupt your entire form!

  To summarize, LTEST02.DOC should now have these characteristics:

  • Print Preview should display a page exactly as it did for your original document.
  • The printer should be CutePDF, its Properties show Portrait Orientation, and Advanced shows Paper Size Letter LS.
  • Page Setup should have your correct Margins and Paper Size should show Letter LS, 11w, 8.5h, and Portrait.

• You are now ready to generate the PDF Form File (the PDFF). Select Print. The proper settings have been established, so you just have to select OK for CutePDF to make the PDFF.

• If you open the PDFF in Acrobat Reader, it may not display or print quite as expected. It will most likely display as a portrait page with the data oriented correctly on the page, but you will have to "rotate your head 90 degrees" to view it. It should also print correctly by default. But, sometimes, you may have to change the Print settings for Auto Rotate and Center, Choose Paper Source by PDF Page Size, and/or Printer Properties Orientation to landscape until the "print thumbnail" displays just like the main display. Once the thumbnail "looks like" the main display, it should print correctly as a landscape form.

• Remember, these procedures are critical. If you handle a step incorrectly, the final result may not be valid! If you need to make changes in your form, start over at step one with your "real" Word form.

• You can now use the PDFF form file just created to generate a PDF form with the FORMagic/400 PDF client, upload it to the AS/400, and use command FMGPDF01 to generate a PDF file in the IFS, all as you normally would. A procedure for quick testing is provided below.

Quick test for landscape forms in PDF files:

• Insure library FMAGIC is in your library list.
• Do not attempt to use Test Option 5 in Work With Overlays to test your form. Instead, you must have an existing spoolfile ready for creating a test PDF file, create a trivial application to generate the necessary spoolfile, or use the process here to run a quick test.
• The AS/400 spoolfile attributes must specify correct and consistent PAGESIZE, CPI, LPI, and OVRFLW parameter values for the exact landscape page you are using. If you are testing a Letter LS form size, execute this override: OVRPRTF FILE(QSYSPRT) PAGESIZE(51 132) LPI(6) CPI(10) OVRFLW(49) PAGRTT(90) FONT(*CPI)
• Press the print key to capture a screen. It must not actually print; you may need to hold the OUTQ or include HOLD(*YES) in the override.
• Execute this command; change the IFS path and OVLNAME to your values: FMGPDF01 SPLF(QSYSPRT) IFSPATH('/xxxxx') PDFFILE(LTEST02P) MRGOVLS(*FORMINFO) OVLNAME(LTEST02) FORMINFO((1))
• If the form and spoolfile data do not alogn as desired, use the PAGEINFO parameter to adjust the data to align with the form.
• LTEST02P.PDF shows the final result. Use Acrobat Reader to view it. It should view correctly. As with all Acrobat files in Landscape orientation, you may have to change the Print settings for Auto Rotate and Center, Choose Paper Source by PDF Page Size, and/or the Printer Properties Orientation to landscape to print the file correctly.