[CLUE-Tech] HTML forms and printing

[Keith Hellman]

Kevin:

Your situation sounds like the following:
1>  Your serving Word documents (as forms) that your recipients usually A>
print out and fill out, B> fill out (in word) then print, or C> fill out
in word, save, and send back to you.
2>  You may be providing these forms from static source (not a web
server), so you haven't been using form submission via CGI
3>  You (or whoever was doing these forms beforehand) are using a web
server, but haven't (due to time, skill set...) used CGI functionality.

Any or all of the above may be true, and I would suggest the same thing:
DESIGN THE FORM IN HTML
* Make it a very simple HTML page, something with a header describing form
version, don't use fancy fonts or anything like that, just very plain
vanilla HTML.
* Even if you have not done CGI programming before, or perhaps you don't
have access to implement CGI on the server, or perhaps you aren't even
using a server (perhaps your delivering this content in ZIP files or
CD-ROM?); I'm pretty sure you can setup POST html forms for delivery to an
EMAIL address.  I don't have my HTML ref with me (its at work), but I'm
pretty sure this is doable.  Letting your user fill out the form in their
browser, then having it delivered to your (or a special) email address, is
very efficient.
* If some the target form users won't have WWW access, they can still
print this nice simple form out with their printer, fill it in by hand,
and snail mail it to you.
* The only thing your missing (vs the current Word scenario) is the
ability for users to edit the Word document and send it back to you
electronically - but I would argue that this is equivilent to them
completing the HTML form in their browser and having the result sent back
to you via POST/EMAIL.

BUT WAIT! THERES MORE!
* If you do want to provide a pretty print version, then do it with
cascading style sheets!  Keep the logic (in the plain vanilla HTML file)
the same, simply reference a style sheet from it.
* Design the CSS sheet appropriately, then open the form in a recent
version of Netscape (or any descent CSS aware browser), print the form to
a postscript file, then run ps2pdf and create a PDF file.  PDFs (IMHO) are
the ONLY way to gaurantee consistant printouts across client apps, OSs,
and printers.
* Provide this PDF file with (perhaps with a link to it) from the original
HTML file when you deliver the form (through static or dynamic means).
* You could go so far as to have a number of CSS layout sheets, each one
would simply need a separate Save As op and ps2pdf operation.
* I should also point out that if you deliver a style sheet with the HTML
form, it (the HTML form) won't look so plain vanilla after all ;^)

There is an 'html2ps' command in many linux distros (part of sgml or
libhtml?), but I don't know if it is CSS aware.

HTH - and Happy Hacking.


--- Kevin Cullis <kevincu at orci.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I've just started working with HTML forms and I'd like some suggestions
> from you all.  The problem is that I'm sending out Word forms and it's
> causing problems with formatting with different versions of Word as well
> as not getting 100% of the people, i.e. those that DON'T have Word, like
> myself.
> 
> So, I'd like to propose an HTML form which will, once filled out, would
> be printable and printed by each person after the text is cut and pasted
> into the forms. I've seen the "Printer version" icon on most sites so I
> was wondering what you all thought.
> 
> Can anyone point me in the right direction and/or what issues/problems
> I'd have with this?
> 
> TIA
> 
> Kevin
> _______________________________________________
> CLUE-Tech mailing list
> CLUE-Tech at clue.denver.co.us
> http://clue.denver.co.us/mailman/listinfo/clue-tech


=====
Keith E. Hellman
kehellman at yahoo.com

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