Why does pdftk chop the tops off the characters in my form fields?
Question
When I populate acrobat form fields by importing an FDF file into NitroPDF, things look fine. When I type data into the form fields manually in Acrobat 8, things look fine. When I use pdftk (on Windows XP or 2K), the tops of the characters in each form field are chopped off. Is there a parameter I'm missing somewhere? There aren't that many settings in pdftk...
Here's what I'm running:
pdftk form.pdf fill_form data.fdf output out.pdf flatten
Digging deeper, it appears supplied text:
<</T (A) /V (123)>>
Gets reworked to:
<</T (A) /V ([fe][ff][nul]1[nul]2[nul]3)>>
(I determined this by loading an "un-flattened" out.pdf into NitroPDF and exporting the FDF).
Solution
I ended up proofing the document using pdftk and Acrobat Reader as I worked, instead of the import in NitroPDF. It appears that the baseline for the characters is different. To get the results I was after, I had to make each field about twice the height required by NitroPDF and overlap fields.
I would still recommend NitroPDF for the rest of its capabilities.
OTHER TIPS
I believe PDFTK only supports earlier versions of the PDF standard (up to 1.4 I think) so maybe it's just starting to show its age?