At work (which is going really well so far) we have a form, made available online, which we have to fill out. It is created in Adobe. At this point my company only has Adobe Reader.

The form is badly designed: for instance, it permits only numerical entries in some fields which should also allow letters and symbols, and in some fields it displays numbers as integers even when you input a decimal.

The other problem is that Fill-in Forms is not enabled, so we can't save the values.

I know that buying Acrobat would give us the ability to save the data we enter. Would we also be able to change the formatting of the fields? My boss is trying to decide if it would be worthwhile. As it is, we have to edit the printed form in pen to make it correct.

Thanks!

tom, what are you thinking of doing with the iTalk? We tested them at work for the looniversity give-all-the-kids-iPods project, although only a few of this semester's projects are really using iTalk.

As far as quality goes, I've used the thing successfully for voice recordings (I wouldn't try using it for music -- the sound you get is quite clear but not terribly rich or detailed).

The big limit is range: It's good for anything from a handheld dictaphone or interview kind of use, on up to plunking your pod down on the table at a meeting, but beyond 6-10 feet away, the level really drops off. (I actually failed to get good background noise when I tried recording next to a really loud construction site.)

So it's not great for, say, students recording lectures (or sneaking a Pod into Hecubotic bookstore readings). However, if the bot in question has the iPod at the lectern, the iTalk works just fine for recording a master copy to be distributed later.

amych, yes I was thinking about recording the Quimby's reading with Hec et al.

I've done a little more research that backs up your observation about the poor range of the iTalk. There is another product by Belkin that's similar, but doesn't have a speaker. And then Belkin also has something where you plug your own microphone into it (rather than having a built-in microphone). Maybe that last one is the way to go, with the kind of microphone that records from where you aim it (i.e. not an omnidirectinal one).

Or maybe this whole thing will be too much trouble, as a separate microphone would require a stand of some sort.

I know that buying Acrobat would give us the ability to save the data we enter. Would we also be able to change the formatting of the fields? My boss is trying to decide if it would be worthwhile. As it is, we have to edit the printed form in pen to make it correct.

Ouise, I have Acrobat. You can certainly edit the text of the form if needed. I've never tried anything with fill in fields, so I can't answer the field formatting question, but since since Acrobat was probably used to create the form, it should do what you need it to do. At very worst, you'd at least be able to recreate the form.

Thanks, DX. Unfortunately I can't recreate the form; it's an official government form on "letterhead", so I don't think making my own version would be ok.

Thanks tommyrot.

Later when I have more time, I'll probably have questions about getting iTunes to talk to my CD burner.

Incidentally, with Acrobat and the fill-in-forms thing, even if they had enabled fill in forms, if your company only had Reader, you would still not have been able to save the filled-in data. You can fill it in, and you can print it out like that, but you can't actually save the data. IIRC.

Oh, and I know that wasn't an answer to your question, and neither is this, but there are intermediate levels of the product, one of which does allow you to save fill-in form data, but doesn't allow you to alter the form.

Would we also be able to change the formatting of the fields?

I do forms with active fields pretty often. You should be able to change the characteristics of the fields, and you can edit the copy line by line. If you'd like to know for sure, and it's not a secret form, you could send me a copy and I could make sure that Acrobat would do what you need.

You can fill it in, and you can print it out like that, but you can't actually save the data. IIRC.

I know from recent experience this is 100% true.

Can this relational database be saved?

I'm working on a Access database to be used behind a website for my digital libraries class. It's on a China collection. Each catalogue item has one or more pieces. (eg A teapot has a lit and the pot itself, or serving dish with lid.) There can also be one or more photos per catalogue item, but the multiple photos do not correspond in any way to the multiple pieces.

So we have the main catalogue record table linked to the piece table via the catalogue number. And it is also linked to the photo table via the same field.

When we try to run a query displaying the information from all three tables, we get a record in the query for each of the possible combinations of photo and piece there are. All we need is one bigass record displaying all of the relevant info. Is this possible? I just cannot get my brain around how to make this work.