Monkeybread Software - DynaPDF Manual

DynaPDF Manual - Page 72

Interactive Forms

Page 72 of 860

field type of this group field is set to ftGroup as usual but the group type is set to a field type

other than ftGroup (see GetFieldGroupType()).

The unambiguous test whether a group field is an ordinary group field or a terminal field of a

Field Group is to compare the group type with the field type. If the group type is something else

than ftGroup then this is a terminal field of a Field Group.

In this case the field contains the field name of the children as well as the field value, default

value, and tooltip. The field flags, background, border and text color, border width, and the

border style are inherited from the terminal field but can be overridden by the children.

Please note that Adobe’s Designer creates mostly Field Groups also if only one child is part of

the group.

When changing a value or property of a Field Group there is nothing special that must be

considered. DynaPDF sets the wished value or property automatically to the right field.

How to create a Field Group?

Field groups can be created in two ways: When creating two fields with the same name and

type then DynaPDF creates automatically a field group. However, it is also possible to set the

handle of the parent field to indicate that the field should be added to this field as a child. The

latter variant is a little bit faster.

Example:

SI32 prt = pdfCreateTextField(pdf, "Test", -1,false,-1,50, 50,150,20);

pdfCreateTextField(pdf, "Test",prt,false,-1,50, 80,150,20);

pdfCreateTextField(pdf, "Test",prt,false,-1,50,110,150,20);

// Same result but requires more processing time

pdfCreateTextField(pdf, "Test", -1, false, -1, 50,

50, 150, 20);

pdfCreateTextField(pdf, "Test", -1, false, -1, 50,

80, 150, 20);

pdfCreateTextField(pdf, "Test", -1, false, -1, 50, 110, 150, 20);

See also section "Fields with identical names".

How to change the tabulator order?

The form fields and annotations of a page are stored in an array. The order of fields in this array

represents the tab order. New fields are added to the array in the order in which they were

created. To enable the definition of an arbitrary tab order, each form field and annotation holds

a page index variable which can be used to sort the fields.