PDF as medium for questionnaires?

[Jim Robertson]

Increasingly frequently, I receive MS Word files as questionnaires. I'm told
I can answer in the document and return by email, but often the document
includes those "rate on a 1-5 or 1-9 scale" things where I'm supposed to
circle the number to answer. How silly is that. Yes, there are drawing
kludges in Word that will permit me to do it, but how many people know how
to embed drawing layers on top of text, anchored to a certain point on the
page - oh, wait - if it's anchored to the PAGE and the Word doc comes back
to the writer who's used a different font, he may end up with results FAR
worse than hanging chad!

My understanding is that pdf's can be created such that they're DESIGNED to
allow input from the reader (the carbon-based reader -- oops, I mean the
human, living PERSON reader, not Adobe Reader carbonized). Actually, I guess
I mean both; i.e., I've heard that the free Reader application allows the
human person reading the pdf to make text and check-box responses to
questionnaires. Is this correct, or does one need the full Acrobat
application (the expensive one) to make ANY changes to a pdf?

Jim Robertson
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