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For the complete documentation index, see llms.txt. This page is also available as Markdown.

Does the Apryse SDK support XFA/LifeCycle PDF forms?

Note that XFA/LiveCycle has been removed from the PDF 2.0 specification.

PDFNet SDK currently offers very limited support for XFA (i.e. Adobe LiveCycle) forms. Also we are not aware of any other third party product on the marked that fully and correctly supports XFA.

A work around is to re-save the PDF document with AcroForm/PDF compatibility in LifeCycle-Designer (where Apryse SDK fully supports AcroForm). After resaving the document using LifeCycle-Designer you will be able to properly render and process the document using our products such as PDF2Image.

Below is an excerpt from an outside independent article:

XFA Forms have their roots in a former e-forms company called JetForm later renamed Accelio and acquired by Adobe in 2002. XFA concepts were first introduced in PDF 1.5 (Acrobat 6) and expanded in PDF 1.6, (Acrobat 7). Unlike Adobe’s earlier forms technology XFA Forms utilize XML throughout. While this can be viewed as a technically superior approach as it leverages XML as the backbone for all types of structured documents, there are distinct drawbacks to be considered:

  • Adobe XFA Forms are not compatible with AcroForms, and they cannot be modified in Acrobat.

  • Creating XFA form requires Adobe LiveCycle Forms Designer which ships with Acrobat 7; and, on the backend there are no commercial or open-source alternatives to the proprietary Adobe Forms Server for processing XFA Forms.

  • Existing Acrobat AcroForms cannot be automatically converted to XFA Forms. Typographic fidelity may need to be sacrificed when manually redrawing the forms with LiveCycle Designer.

  • Adobe XFA Form documents are not compatible with versions of Acrobat or Reader prior to 6.0. There are no reliable statistics on the versions of Acrobat and Reader currently in use in the world. Anecdotal evidence based on sales and customer support calls indicates plenty of end users are still running version 5 or 4.

  • AcroForms JavaScript is not supported with XFA Forms. A different, incompatible JavaScript syntax is used which leads to increased programming costs.

  • XFA Forms are not part of the PDF/A (Archiving) standard which is based on PDF Version 1.4. Applications for government or other institutions that must comply with digital archive standards may be problematic.

  • There are no commercial or open-source alternatives to using Adobe products for XFA Forms as there are with AcroForms. If you run into problems with XFA Forms you will have no one else to call besides Adobe.

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