Chapter 2, Template Features for Designing Static Forms
XFA Specification
Formatting Text That Appears as Fixed or Variable Content
43
“Image Data” on page 135
references that appear in data.
Scaling the Image to Fit the Container (aspect)
Image elements contain a property (
aspect
) that specifies how the image should be adjusted to fit within
the dimension of the draw.
See “Images” on page 52.
External Data
The
exData
may enclose foreign data, which is PCDATA that represents the actual data content
of the
specified content type. The actual data is encoded as specified by
exData
.
When no data content is provided, the data content may be interpreted as representing a null value. This
behavior is dependent upon the context of where the data content is used. For instance, a field may
interpret empty data content as null based upon its
bind.nullType
property.
Formatting Text That Appears as Fixed or Variable Content
Text may appear in many places in an XFA form. It may appear as fixed content, such as that in a draw
container or in a caption; and it may appear as variable content, such as that supplied by the user or some
other source. This section explains how such text can be formatted.
Fixed or variable content text is formatted based on the containing element’s paragraph-formatting and
font-formatting properties, which may themselves be inherited from an ancestor container. If the text
content is derived from rich text, the formatting contained in the rich text over-rides formatting described
by the containing element.
In addition to being formatted as described above, variable content text is also formatted as specified in
localized patterns (picture clause) that may be used in displaying the data. Additionally, it may be
formatted using various barcode styles.
Paragraph and Font Formatting of Fixed and Variable Content
General text formatting characteristics, such as alignment and margins, are specified by the
para
and font characteristics, such as font name and size, are specified by the
font
characteristics may be inherited from an ancestor. As a result, it is most efficient to specify formatting at
the highest level possible in the template and having subordinate containers inherit those definitions.
Whether text is provided by the template or by an external source (such as a user filling out a form or a
database server), text is organized as a series of records separated by newline indicators. In the case of user
data, the newline indicator is inserted by the data loader as described in
“Exchanging Data Between an
External Application and a Basic XFA Form” on page 113.
Each record consists of a stream of characters. In
the case of rich text, each record may also include formatting markup and embedded objects.