Building advanced forms

We want software that takes commonly used industry paper forms and puts them in a SQL application. We want to hard-code or protect the form wording so it can only be struck out and new words inserted in a different font with none of the existing form wor

We want software that takes commonly used industry paper forms and puts them in a SQL application. We want to hard-code or protect the wording so it can only be struck out and new words inserted in a different font with none of the existing form words changed or altered. We also want users to fill in the spaces provided with their information, and let the space grow or shrink depending on the amount of data input. Where should we start looking?

The InfoPath forms we described in a recent column (https://www.nwfusion.com/columnists/2004/101104internet.html) can do these things. If your audience is broader than Windows 2003 users, look towards open standards-based software, such as Xforms (https://www.w3c.org/MarkUp/Forms), or the XUL system used by Mozilla (https://www.mozilla.org/projects/xul), which can build dynamic forms and communicate with back-end databases. An Xforms plug-in for Internet Explorer is available at www.formsplayer.com. Mozquito Deng (http://claus.packts.net) is an Xforms plug-in in Macromedia Flash that works in browsers supported by Flash. The XMLSpy tools from www.altova.com provide support for generating dynamic XML-driven forms for multiple browsers, and includes an end-user desktop editor for XML-based content.

Blass is a network architect at Change@Work in Houston. He can be reached at dr.internet@changeatwork.com.