How to get rid of extra space at beginning of multiline field

Question

I have a form with both one-line and multiline fields. The one-line fields are fine, and the multiline fields look fine in LCD. However, when I open the form in Acrobat Pro, each multiline field has a blank space already in it! I checked with a user, and the same thing happens when she opens the form in Reader.
I verified that this is a problem with multiline fields by changing a one-line field to multiline. As soon as I did, the extra space appeared in Pro & Reader.
Has anyone else had this problem, and if so, what did you do about it?
Thanks!
Kathryn

Answer 1

P. S. Since I had a number of multiline fields on my forms, I decided to venture into uncharted LCD territory and create a custom function which I could use as needed. What I thought would be a simple task ended up taking four hours. I'm posting what I discovered here in the hope that it may save someone else time :)
First of all, apparently you can't create reusable functions in FormCalc, but only in JavaScript. You have to store them in a Script Object in order to make them available to the fields in the form. (Create the script object by right-clicking on the form in Hierarchy View and choose Insert Script Object).
Converting the FormCalc function to JavaScript was an adventure. Long story short, this is what I ended up with:
function space_bug_fix(field_name, field_contents)
field_contents = escape(field_contents)
//escapes the space to its URL encoding (%20) so the script can recognize it
if (field_contents == "%20") {
xfa.resolveNode(field_name).rawValue = "";
//if the field contains only %20--in otherwords, the buggy space--delete it.
I spent a while trying to get getField() to work, but apparently it doesn't work in the LCD xfa environment. You have to use resolveNode().
Accessing the function was not straightforward either and also required use of the resolveNode function. This is the JavaScript I finally got to work:
xfa.resolveNode("form1..custom_functions").space_bug_fix(this.name, this.rawValue);
(custom_functions is the name I gave the script object). And as a reminder, the language in every event where this function is called has to be set to JavaScript.
Kathryn