[CLUE-Tech] HTML forms and printing

[Keith Hellman]

Kevin:

Yikes, I did not understand the situation.  If you want people to be able
to provide PAGES of information, and then still print the forms out nice
and pretty, then HTML FORMS+CGI won't do the trick.

It would suffice if the only free text regions had specific limits on how
much text could be entered; then you could size the TEXTAREA form fields
appropriately and all would be fine (or at least alot closer to fine).

But if people can and should be entering large amounts of text, then your
going to end up with VERY LARGE and AWKWARD TO NAVIGATE text areas in your
HTML page.  Even worse is that a browser won't know to size the area to
the amount of text before printing.  Even after applying CSS, you'll end
up with either a little text in a TOO BIG BOX, or a completely filled text
entry box, with a scrollbar, but you would get all the text entry printed
out.  This is definetly not what your looking for.

There may be a way around this with some very funky JavaScript code (damn
where IS that book...), but I would have to contemplate that one a little
bit more.  Would you say it is a requirement that the user can make
intermediate saves of the in-process form?

BTW:  Would the HTML be served from a server?  Or delivered statically via
file download or CD-ROM?  Do both have to be supported?  Is it being
served from a machine, can you use CGI?  If so, whats the server?  Of
course now were talking serious application development time...

Another route is writing a Java application tailored specifically to your
form.  Of course that is another route with serious application time...

Yet another route is to actually use Acrobat, not the reader, but the
actual application.  Acrobat does have form functionality in it, would
allow people to email completed forms to you, or print them out and snail
mail.  I'm not sure how it would handle the can-be-30-pages-of-text issue,
but it may be worth investigating.

BTW:  isn't it strange how $19.99 is the price that pretty much anybody
would have come up with!

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

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