Adding descriptive text and positioning

[rlinder]

I got some questions from a customer regarding the html form used for

varable data input. Is it possible for the customer to customize these

forms in some way? ex. before the form is uploaded to the server?

The specific questions from the customer is as follows:

 

1. How can we add descpritive text to VDP template order pages (and

position them as wanted, i.e. as a header between input fields)?

 

2. Is it possible to adjust the positions of objects (prompts, text input

boxes, buttons) on VDP template order pages?

 

 

I have an example of what they are looking for, but the Forum says that I have exceeded the file size limit, even though I've deleted all previously uploaded files.

[Dan Korn]

I got some questions from a customer regarding the html form used for

varable data input.

Are you talking about a form on Printable's FusionPro Web application, or an HTML form that you're generating in your own web application with the "Define HTML Form" feature in FusionPro Desktop? If it's the former, I suggest asking on the FP Web Forum. If it's the latter, you can modify your XSL (XML to HTML) transformation code to do just about anything you want.

[randy.willeyefi.com]

I have a similar situation using the Define HTML Form feature in FusionPro Desktop. I want to have a field display on the generated web form that has a Prompt of "EMail" followed by a single-line fill-in field, but immediately after the field I would like to display static text like "@domain.com" as an indication to the user that they do not need to enter that as part of their response.

 

I do not understand what is meant by modifying the XSL transformation code. Is there documentation on this? Can what I am attempting to accomplish be handled by editing the XML file that is generated by FusionPro prior to performing the Collect?

[Dan Korn]

I have a similar situation using the Define HTML Form feature in FusionPro Desktop. I want to have a field display on the generated web form that has a Prompt of "EMail" followed by a single-line fill-in field, but immediately after the field I would like to display static text like "@domain.com" as an indication to the user that they do not need to enter that as part of their response.

 

I do not understand what is meant by modifying the XSL transformation code. Is there documentation on this? Can what I am attempting to accomplish be handled by editing the XML file that is generated by FusionPro prior to performing the Collect?

All FusionPro produces from the Web DataCollect dialog is an XML file with basic definitions of input data fields, as defined in the dialog.

 

An XSL transformation (or some other similar operation) has to take place to convert this XML to an HTML file to be shown on a website to capture user input. When you click the "Preview Form" button, FusionPro does an XSL tranformation using the XSL files in the WebCollect folder, and adds some static HTML from the HTML files in that same folder, to generate the sample HTML form that's shown in your browser.

 

But the sample HTML form you see when you click "Preview Form" is just that, a sample. The expectation is that a web-to-print system utilizing the Form Definition file with FusionPro VDP Producer (FP Server) will do its own XSL transformation to generate a customized HTML form on its own website. Your (EFI's) own DSF application does exactly this to generate user input web forms based on the XML files.

 

Such a custom transformation can be programmed to do whatever the web-to-print system requires, to show whatever kind of form it wants. This is something that would normally be done by a web developer who is designing the website. For instance, .NET, as well as most other high-level web development languages, has a set of XSL transformation APIs. But it doesn't have to be an XSL transformation which creates HTML; it can be any kind of process which parses the XML file to build a user input form. For example, if you have an ASP.NET website, you could use the XML parsing capabilities in C# to process the XML file and then generate the .aspx page with the appropriate controls for user input. (The new FusionPro VDP Producer Web Service does something similar to return SOAP objects from the XML from definition data, which the Manager application uses to create a .NET PropertyGrid control for user input in its Preview dialog.)

 

So, if you already have a system, such as the DSF, which is doing an XSL transformation to generate an HTML web input from from the XML file, then you need to modify that XSL logic, in your own custom XSL files, to add whatever other attributes or text to the user input form that you want.

 

Editing the XML file itself won't really help; it's a matter of how your application interprets the XML file to generate its user input form.