Add multiple text fields in a 'grid'

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yahbai

Hi all,

I'm a new user looking for an alternative to Acrobat in our specific use cases.

We are using PDF files with named text fields as 'templates' to feed into a javascript library, which finds the named text fields, fills in data to those fields and then finally generates a complete 'filled in' PDF output file.
We generally start with a pre-built PDF, and then add text fields to be filled in specific regions of the existing PDF.  We've previously been using acrobat for this, but I'd like to move away from this.

So far this works fine using Scribus - I can open an existing PDF file, add a text field, name it, save as PDF.  At that point our JS library can open the PDF and fill in the value in that named text field.


The problem is more one of automation/simplicity:

Our initial PDF's generally contain tables, lets say with up to a few hundred cells.  We need to create text fields in all those cells, and name them (so something like 'column5_12' for the 12th row of column 5).  ...So doing this one at a time for each cell isn't exactly efficient (ignoring then having to align/distribute etc)

So I'm wondering is there any automated way using Scribus to create all of these text fields in one go, instead of 1 by 1?
Perhaps a column at a time?  entire table at a time?
Is it possible to do this with a scribus script?  ...do any scripts like this exist I could look at?
Could I instead do this somehow using Scribus tables?