How can I create fillable input forms inside a pdf?

Question

I need to create PDF forms which can be used to take input from the user. They need to contain drop down boxes and text boxes. Please suggest which software or tool will best suit my purpose

Answer 1

First of all, software recommendations have meanwhile become off-topic on stack overflow, different stack exchange sites for that have been established since then.

That been said, the question itself is not very exact. There actually are two major form technologies in use in PDFs: AcroForm forms and XFA forms.

• AcroForm forms are the original PDF forms technology conclusively specified in the PDF specification ISO 32000-1 (soon to be updated by part 2). This technology only allows static forms, i.e. forms for which the number and positions of fields is already fixed at form definition time. (Actually there is a dynamic sub-feature of this technology, page templates which fields, which allows you to add extra pages with their own fields, but this feature is hardly ever used.)

  Creating and filling this kind of forms nowadays is possible using a wide selection of options, desktop applications (Adobe's Acrobat being just one among many), web applications, and general purpose PDF libraries for many languages or platforms. A quick search on google can show you many options...

  Displaying this kind of forms is possible on many PDF viewers, editing them visually at least on numerous of them.

• XFA (XML Forms Architecture) forms are an alternative forms technology introduced by Adobe which is referenced by the PDF specification (part 1) but which has remained in the Adobe legacy domain. This technology actually uses PDF files merely as transport medium, the XML definitions of XFA forms define forms in a way that is independent of PDF as such. XFA forms can be dynamic (e.g. they can contain tables with variable number of columns), their form elements can grow and move later elements.

  Creating and filling this kind of forms is possible using only a small selection of options, foremost Adobe desktop and server products and very few alternative solutions.

  Displaying this kind of forms is possible only on Adobe products and a very small selection of other products, and depending on the version of the Adobe PDF viewer a digital signature by a Adobe private key might be required for non-trivial use of such forms.

  Support for XFA forms will become deprecated in the ISO 32000-2 specification. Thus, using them in new projects might not be the best idea.