XFA Specification
Chapter 2, Template Features for Designing Static Forms
Appearance Order (Z-Order)
67
Inclusion/exclusion of container elements based on correlation between "relevant" value
in template container element and config
Config relevant element
Template relevant
attribute
print
manager
-print
-manager
print -manager
-print manager
-print -manager
""
(null)
print
manager
manager
print
summary
""
(null)
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Exclusion of Hidden Containers in the Data Binding Process
If a container is hidden as a result of settings in the
presence
attribute, the container included in the XFA
Form DOM and is considered in the data binding process. Calculations may provide values to such hidden
containers; however, the person filling out the form cannot.
If a container is hidden as a result of the
relevant
attribute, it is excluded from both the XFA Template
DOM and the XFA Form DOM. Hence it plays no part in the data binding process.
Appearance Order (Z-Order)
While the form coordinate space is two-dimensional, it should be recognized that container elements
appear to exist at different depths. Objects at shallower depths (closer to the user) may visibly obscure
parts of objects at deeper depths. This notion of a depth-based order is the Z-order of the form. One can
think of objects that come early in the Z-order as being placed on the presentation media earlier in the
construction of the form. Objects that come later are placed over top of the earlier objects.
Each subform and area encloses other container objects. The subform or area imposes an implicit Z-order
for those containers, which is simply the order in which the children occur; the first object exists at a
deeper Z-order depth than the last object. This is convenient for many drawing APIs, where objects drawn
later appear on top of objects drawn earlier.
Within an container's box model, there is also a Z-ordering. Content will always appear on top of the
border when the two overlap.
GUI-based template design applications may provide the ability to move an object in front of or behind
another object. Such movement is accomplished by changing the order in which the objects appear in the
document.
In the following example,
Rectangle1
obscures
TextField1
.
TextField1
could be placed on top of
Rectangle1
by simply reversing the order in which they appear in the document.