XFA

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

XFA stands for XML Forms Architecture, a family of XML specifications that was suggested and developed by JetForm to enhance the processing of web forms. It is an improvement to XML, which is in turn an improvement to simple HTML forms, which don't allow more advanced types of content management.

XFA's main extension to XML are computationally active tags[1]. In addition, all instances created from a given XFA form template keep the specification of data capture, rendering, and manipulation rules from the original. Another major advantage of XFA is that its data format allows compatibility with other systems, and with changes to other technology, applications and technology standards.

According to JetForm's submission to the World Wide Web Consortium, "XFA addresses the needs of organizations to securely capture, present, move, process, output and print information associated with electronic forms."[2] The XFA proposal was submitted to the W3C in May 1999.

In 2002, the JetForms Corporation was acquired by Adobe Systems, and the latter introduced XFA forms with PDF 1.5 and the subsequent Acrobat releases (6 and 7) in 2003.[3]

[edit] References

  1. ^ From E-forms to Xforms (accessed August 14, 2006)
  2. ^ W3C Submission (accessed August 14, 2006)
  3. ^ A Quick Introduction to Acrobat Forms Technology (PDF format)