FDFMerge Command Line Introduction

Introduction

FDFMerge is a command-line application. If you are used to the Microsoft Windows or Apple Mac OS X operating system, you may not be familiar with running command-line tools. This section shows you all you need to get started.

Windows tells you how to use FDFMerge on Windows.
Mac OS X tells you how to use FDFMerge on Macintosh.

Note: You can refer to the Getting Started With Command Line Applications for additional information on using command-line applications.

Windows

To run FDFMerge in Windows, you need to open a Command Prompt window.

In Windows XP, Vista or 7:

Click Start > Programs > Accessories > Command Prompt

The Command Prompt window opens.

Some basic commands

At the command prompt, you type each command, and press the Enter key to execute it. You can use the mouse to select text to copy or cut to the clipboard, but you cannot position the cursor with it. The command line is completely keyboard driven. Navigation keys are shown below:

KEY	ACTION
Backspace	Delete previous character
Right arrow	Move right one character
Left arrow	Move left one character
Up arrow	Recall previous command
Tab	File or directory name auto complete
Enter	Execute command

In addition to running programs, you have many commands to navigate and maintain the system. Two important ones are cd and dir.

Changing directories

Use the cd command to change directories. For example, to change to the directory that FDFMerge is located in, type:

C:\>cd \Appligent\FDFMerge\

The command prompt changes to:

C:\Appligent\FDFMerge>

to show you where you are.

To move back one level, use the shortcut of two periods (..)

C:\Appligent\FDFMerge>cd..

Don’t forget to press the Enter key after every command. You will now be in this directory:

C:\Appligent>

Move back to FDFMerge:

C:\Appligent>cd FDFMerge

Listing the contents of a directory

Use the dir command to list the contents of a directory:

C:\Appligent\FDFMerge>dir

The computer responds with a listing of all the contents of the FDFMerge directory.

If the directory contents fly by too fast to read, do this:

C:\Appligent\FDFMerge>dir /p

The /p switch tells DOS to display one page at a time. Press the Enter key to see the next page.

To see the contents of all the subdirectories at the same time, type:

C:\Appligent\FDFMerge>dir /s

This displays the contents of FDFMerge and all the subdirectories under it.

Running FDFMerge

To run FDFMerge, type the commands on the command line as shown in other sections of this manual and press Enter. In the next example, we’ve truncated the command prompt path for clarity.

> .\fdfmerge -o \path\samples\healthform\output.pdf \path\samples\healthform\healthform.pdf \path\samples\healthform\healthform.fdf

The healthform.fdf file will be merged into healthform.pdf to create a filled-in form. If you do not specify the correct path, you will get a “file not found” error. Now, refer to the rest of this User Guide for details about using FDFMerge.

Mac OS X

To run FDFMerge on the Macintosh, you need to open a terminal window. In the Applications folder:

Open the Utilities folder.
Double-click the Terminal application

The Terminal window opens.

Some basic commands

At the command prompt, you type each command, and press the Return key to execute it. You can use the mouse to select text to copy or cut to the clipboard, but you cannot position the cursor with it. The command line is completely keyboard driven. Navigation keys are shown below:

KEY	ACTION
Backspace	Delete previous character
Right arrow	Move right one character
Left arrow	Move left one character
Up arrow	Recall previous command
Tab	File or directory name auto complete
Return	Execute command

In addition to running programs, you have many commands to navigate and maintain the system. Two important ones are cd and ls.