Re: Has anyone out there used FormBridge?

Patrick Halstead — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 00:04:57 GMT

Hi Justan Ewbie,

We all think FormsBridge sucks. Seriously, you should just get a real Web Service like Qdabra's DBXL. :)

Now, if you are only concerned with converting PDF to InfoPath, guess what? That's hard. No software company is going to do that well. That's because PDF is a two dimensional format. InfoPath is HTML markup. When I was development manager of InfoPath at Microsoft, we spent 2 months prototyping a tool to do that. PDF to InfoPath. We got it working using ScanSoft and guess what? It didn't really work because in the end, you have to parse the layout. And, that's just plain hard. It's actually harder than natural language processing, and today how many computers do you know that can actually understand human language? I'm not talking about spelling and morphology. Syntax and semantics are unsolved problems. Understanding 2d layouts and converting into a well-formed InfoPath form is just as hard. There is absolutely no software today that will do that and generate acceptable results. The end results will have to be hand-tweaked. Even if you could get the layout, you won't get the XML schema and that is the most important element in InfoPath. PDF XML supports XML schemas but they don't do a good job with repeating structures so you're going to have to recreate the data source too. You're better off just paying Qdabra to create your forms from scratch. It will take less time and we'll do a better job. We have the best rates in town and we're also InfoPath experts. FormsBridge folks didn't create InfoPath. We did.

I rest my case.

(Disclaimer: Qdabra Software funds this forum. We are not going to tell our forum customers to go use a product that competes with Qdabra's and that is inferior).

If you are interested in our Web Services and/or Consulting Services, we'd be happy to help. Just go to Qdabra.com and Contact Us.

Has anyone out there used FormBridge?

justanewbie — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 13:11:36 GMT

My company is looking into getting FormBridge software to convert PDF forms to InfoPath 2007.

Has anyone out there used this software? If you have, could you post your feedback?

In addition to finding out how you used it (conversion or development license), I'm also looking for answers to the following questions:

Did the software meet or exceed your expectation?
What kinds of issues did you encounter (if any) and were they easily resolved?
Did the team at Texcel respond to your questions or concerns in a timely manner?
Do you think FormBridge was worth the investment?
Would you recommend FormBridge?

Thanks,

Jim

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Re: Has anyone out there used FormBridge?

Has anyone out there used FormBridge?