We want to create a questionnaire...

users
#1

Hello,

We want to create a questionaire that people can fill out on their
computer and email back to us when complete.

How can we create a document with the following properties:

1. When person clicks on a blank, they can type in their answer, and
the "underline characters" [ _______ ] don't move to the right
2. We want some parts of the form to be uneditable. For example, the
headers, the instructions, the text that says what we expect in every
blank.
3.The document can be saved when completed, or even when partially completed
4. Check-boxes can be clicked on
5.Radio buttons (multiple choice) can be clicked on
6.The document is universal:
   a. People using Windows, Mac, Linux, Playbook, tablets can work on the
form
   b. People don't have to download a special program to fill the form

Thank you very much.

#2

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Hello,

We want to create a questionaire that people can fill out on their
computer and email back to us when complete.

How can we create a document with the following properties:

1. When person clicks on a blank, they can type in their answer, and
the "underline characters" [ _______ ] don't move to the right
2. We want some parts of the form to be uneditable. For example, the
headers, the instructions, the text that says what we expect in every
blank.
3.The document can be saved when completed, or even when partially

completed

4. Check-boxes can be clicked on
5.Radio buttons (multiple choice) can be clicked on
6.The document is universal:
a. People using Windows, Mac, Linux, Playbook, tablets can work on the
form
b. People don't have to download a special program to fill the form

Why do you want to do this with LibreOffice?

This strikes me as something relatively simple to do on a web site.

F.

#3

Fabian,

Yes, the person will be getting to the questionnaire/form through our
website, so a webpage, if it could do all this, is good.

However, the questionnaire is rather long; it has about 70-plus questions.
A text document may be better to use because the person can save their
progress and easily resume anytime.

#4

This all can be done in LibreOffice Writer. You can create a .odt
document by using the tools that you can enable with View --> Toolbars
--> Form design, form navigation and forms control. After your done your
design you can export the .odt document as an .pdf. The pdf document can
be emailed out, filled in and then emailed back.

I use this for a lot of questionaires for my Lions Club activities. Also
under the libreoffice help read the sections under Forms.

Also this may help:

https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/images/7/73/WG3400-WriterGuideLO.pdf

Chapters 14 and 15.

Hope this help.

Russ
openSUSE 12.1(3.1.10-1.9-desktop x86_64)|KDE Platform Version
4.8.3 (4.8.3) "release 504"|Intel core2duo 2.5 MHZ,|8GB
DDR3|GeForce 8400GS(NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-295.53)

#5

Hi, Upscope.

Thanks for your comment.

Is there a quick way to make sure that the protected text and the
field/blank are on the same horizontal level/plane?

#6

Hi :slight_smile:
Pdf is a fairly universal format and most people already have soem version of Adobe Reader on their machine because Pdf and Adobe are so widespread.  There are better Pdf readers such as Foxit (also free) or OpenSource ones.  LibreOffice can read Pdf but editing them is tricky so it's best to keep an original in an OpenDocument Format such as Odt.  Foxit is very fast compared to the Adobe one and doesn't keep demanding you upgrade it but like i say most people already have an Adobe Reader installed.

Pdf tends to be downloadable rather than viewed and filled-in on a web-site.

Perhaps you are looking for an html answer?
http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_forms.asp
I'm not sure what you need on the server-side in order to keep track of the input.  It's one of those things i have managed to avoid needing so far but i really should get to grips with it as i am fairly sure our web-hosts already have everything we need just waiting to be used.

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#7

There is online survey tool called LimeSurvey. It is open sourced and depends
on PHP and MySQL (if you have website, then I believe you do meet these
requirements). It gives users option to save survey and resume for later.
It is used by quite a few universities out there. I recommend you give it a
try.

Their website is at http://www.limesurvey.org/ . You will find documentation
and demo page there as well.

#8

High Tom

do you really recommend a proprietary format like pdf in an open source
environment?

You know, PDF is licensed by Adobe and even a simple end user has to subscribe
a contract with this company. Have you ever read this license agreement? So
PDF ist NOT free.

Walther

#9

Hi :slight_smile:
Yes, sadly i do realise that Pdf is a fairly ethically bad format BUT i do have to live in the real world too.  Pdf is difficult to avoid and there doesn't seem to be much alternative yet.  One of the key requirements of the op was that no special program would have to be installed.  Pdf readers are likely to already be installed on most peoples systems.  The docs team have offered one of the guides as e-pub but pdf remains dominant.

I would recommend moving away from Adobe Reader because there are a lot of alternatives and i think they are almost all better.  Adobe seems to have frequent 'security' updates but many would claim that it needs them because it is so widely used that it is a target.  The theory is that if other programs were so widespread then they would have similar level of trouble.  It's a poor argument but appears popular with people that refuse to try alternatives.

Pdf is free (small f) just not Free in a Libre sense. 
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#10

Am 20.06.2012 10:58, Walther Koehler wrote:

High Tom

do you really recommend a proprietary format like pdf in an open source
environment?

What is your suggestion for the given task?

You know, PDF is licensed by Adobe and even a simple end user has to subscribe
a contract with this company. Have you ever read this license agreement? So
PDF ist NOT free.

When I install LibreOffice as a PDF generating software I do not see any such aggreement nor can I find anything in the readme files.
Mouse-click aggreements do not mean a shit in Germany. Apart from that, I have not installed any Acrobat Reader since many years. There are better PDF readers for all operating systems, free and unfree ones.

#11

The PDF specification is now the subject of a formal international
standard, ISO 32000, part 1 (2008), so it is no longer proprietary.

And most of the PDF readers are free, and many of them are open-source.

#12

High Tom,

yes PDF is free meaning you have not to pay in advance, a least as you use
only basic functions and its not a commercial use. But what when you receive
a document with special features?

Its the same situation I had at the university long time ago: At this time
MSWord was "free" in the sense that nobody cared where you get your license
from, and all students used it and requesetd its use in their offces later
on.

Walther

is free in the Am Mittwoch, 20. Juni 2012 schrieb Tom Davies:

#13

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High Tom,

yes PDF is free meaning you have not to pay in advance, a least as you use
only basic functions and its not a commercial use. But what when you

receive

a document with special features?

Ask for another format, or ask to file the same document in some other
way. Complain, complain, complain. Be very precise about why it's not a
good practice to do that.

Its the same situation I had at the university long time ago: At this time
MSWord was "free" in the sense that nobody cared where you get your

license

from, and all students used it and requesetd its use in their offces later
on.

Walther

To the extent that LibreOffice integrates PDF import and export
functions, there isn't much point in extending this discussion much
longer unless one can propose a valid, better/equivalent alternative. I
personally think an online implementation (via web forms+database/email)
is better suited for this specific case. I can't see a good reason to
use PDF forms except in exceptionally highly custom-formatted scenarios.
Then again, if your questionnaire requires such formatting it may
benefit from some simplification. Here's a list of possible technical
issues of using PDF:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pdf#Technical_issues

If and when there is absolutely no alternative to using a PDF, I'd
suggest you point your audience to this resource for a good, free+open
source PDF reader:
http://pdfreaders.org/

Adobe's reader software is notoriously bloated, and the frequent updates
are there because the reader includes several other dozen formats that
Adobe wants to be readable on every system it's installed on (in
addition to advanced features only available in commercial versions)

What about patents and openness of the PDF standard? This page provides
such details:
http://pdfreaders.org/os.en.html

Microsoft licenses are vey much 100% free and legal to obtain by
students/faculty staff pretty much worldwide now:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DreamSpark_Premium

It's not the same situation with MS software although I see your point.
No Microsoft software is considered an ISO standard and there aren't
100% free open source software implementations of any MS software that I
know of as is the case with the PDF format, so I'd be use such examples
with care - otherwise you'll get the opposite effect when trying to
advocate free, open standards.

Cheers,

Fabián Rodríguez
http://libreoffice.magicfab.ca

#14

I suggest you check out Survey Monkey http://www.surveymonkey.com. You
create the survey, they host and collect the data for you. it is free for
simple surveys.

Mark

#15

Hi :slight_smile:
All good except the side-issue about MS licenses.  To quote from the wiki-page pointed to
"The participating schools pay an annual fee for the service"
"Students may continue to use these products for non-commercial purposes, even after they graduate.  Even after graduation students may receive all free updates to the
software, such as security updates and service packs, that are available
to everyone through ... [citation needed]" (citation needed means the link given doesn't work so i replaced it with dots)

Sadly MS formats almost always do still need to be used to communicate with some people but hopefully that will stop being the case in the future.  Most of us have very different ideas on how to get away from that dependency.  I think we need a multi-vectored approach which is pretty much the way things are going already.

Odd to see someone with an FSF address suggesting MS is cool&groovy!  Lol, i guess we all have strange days occasionally. 
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#16

Hi :slight_smile:
Ooops!  Sorry about my last email!  I just re-read your last paragraph and suddenly the world did start making sense after all!  So, sorry i got confused again there!
Apols and regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#17

Hi :slight_smile:
I think these 2 answers were by far the best in this thread!  I hope they are useful Jenny :slight_smile:
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#18

survey form via Google Apps. The form is available via the Internet, so
it's cross-platform. The data is collected and dumped into a spreadsheet
and is accessible via Google. Very clean, very simple, very effective, very
free. I think it quite possibly would handily meet your requirements.

(But I still love and use LibreOffice!)

#19

I would love to hear how they did this. Many thanks

--- eric

#20

Hi :slight_smile:
Google apps are on our side, if there are sides, in this co-operative competition between ourselves.  Each fills a niche and it's just finding the right tool for the job instead of one great big bloated tool that is never quite right anywhere.  Google are one of LO's supporters and i think they are one of the companies on the Advisory Board that helps guide the BoD. 
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile: