With this XPages custom control you are able to create a fully customized PDF document containing your design and your data and view the created PDF document with a browser or PDF document reader (e.g. Adobe Reader, FoxIt reader etc.). The source of your PDF document data can be a Notes Document or almost anything else.

So far there have been PDF export related solutions where you can create PDF documents from Notes databases using iText Open Source Java library. Using this technique the PDF document is been created “on the fly”, both the design and the data. The technique is fine with simple PDF documents but with more complex PDF document design would be a real pain to create “on the fly”.

Using this Custom Control you are able to separate the UI design part elsewhere. This gives you the flexibility to focus only on the data in your code.

As a result you get a new PDF document which is a mix of your own PDF template file (design) and your own data.

Technically the Custom Control is based on Adobe Acro Forms technique. A normal PDF document containing Acro Fields. The actual implementation has been done by an Open Source iText PDF library.

PDF Acro Forms templates can be created e.g. with Open Office/ Libre Office/ Lotus Symphony Impress & Writer tools.

See the video of how to use this control from http://xpages.info site (http://xpages.info/XPagesHome.nsf/043A042E60E66357852578F1002C9671/$file/PDFExporter.swff)