[NTLUG:Discuss] Office forms

[Christopher Browne]

On Sun, 23 Jul 2000 11:25:42 EST, the world broke into rejoicing as
Randall Gibson <wabbit at tvec.net>  said:
>	Well, I have tried about all Office packages, and Word processors
>that I can, and none seem to support Forms and most dont have any of the
>features like text boxes and drop down menu's. I could not try Wordperfect
>(Office) 2K because there is, as far as I can tell, a free download for
>it. Same with ApplixWare. I am not going to pay for them if I am not
>sure they will do as I need. I have no problem with paying for software,
>even in Linux, but not throwing it to the wind :) 

Ah.  That helps tell what you're _actually_ looking for.  You want to be
able to fill in forms using a "field-oriented" user interface, as opposed
to merely creating documents where you manually "fill in the blanks."

In _that_ case, WordPerfect _isn't_ the right product, although the
port of the Borland Paradox database system that is included with 
Corel Office Deluxe could be.

Lyx/KLyx aren't the right options, unless you were to write a program
using some other tool that generates a database, and then write another
program that reads the database and turns it into Lyx documents.

ApplixWare includes an "application generator" they call SHELF, which
is available freely, which you might use to generate dialogs to generate
forms; it would be something of a programming job.

With the degree of confusion that arose in what you meant by 
"supporting forms," I think you need to describe what you're looking
for a bit more precisely.  I'm not sure that it even has anything to
do with a word processor, which strikes me as a bit of a spurious
requirement.

- There are some web application frameworks that might be pretty usable
  to prepare the forms that you want;
- Applix's SHELF might be usable for the purpose;
- Borland Paradox should be suitable, albeit _definitely_ not available
  in a free form.

But to get more coherent answers, I think you really need to give a more
precise description of the requirements, including some indication of
which of the requirements are actually required, and which are merely
what you're assuming implementation would involve.
--
cbbrowne at hex.net - <http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/framewrk.html>
Microsoft spel chekar vor sail, worgs grate !!
-- <leitner at inf.fu-berlin.de>, Felix von Leitner