Last week, I wasted about 20 minutes trying to fill out a form.

The problem is simple. The form contains a box where I'm supposed to 
write a file path. But the pathname goes through 5 subdirectories, 
ending in a 33-character filename. I don't know about you, but I can't 
write that much text in a space less than 10cm across.

Of course, a computer can easily print that much text in such a space, 
in a legible typeface. What it /can't/ easily do is print that text over 
the top of the printed form.

The next result is that I had to undertake the ridiculous operation of 
printing the form, printing the text to go on the form, and then cutting 
the text out - with a pair of scissors - and gluing it to the form, and 
photocopying it onto another sheet of paper (to be sure the glued 
portion doesn't fall off or something).

All of this seems very silly to me. The printer is perfectly capable of 
printing the final result. It's just that the computer software does not 
allow me to.

(About the best that I could do would be to load the PDF file containing 
the form, load it into Ghostscript, convert it into a bitmap, print the 
text I want to a Postscript printer and redirect to file [thereby 
creating a PS file], load that into Ghostscript, convert it to a bitmap, 
and then use a bitmap editor to combine the two [huge] bitmaps together, 
before finally sending that to the printer. That's a *hell* of a lot of 
work for something this trivial.)

I seriously wonder why nobody has come up with software to composite two 
printouts together. Even the mighty £400 Adobe Acrobat software can't 
overprint two PDFs. (Actually, it seems to be impossible to edit the PDF 
files in any way, except the move whole pages around or edit metadata. 
Which is a piffling amount of functionality for a £400 product. [!])

It seems daft to me that, in the modern age, this is still such a problem.

(On the other hand, I suppose if I could convince the people in charge 
to make the PDF form into a *PDF form*, then I could fill it out 
electronically...)

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On Wed, 12 Jan 2011 13:08:12 +0200, Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:

> Last week, I wasted about 20 minutes trying to fill out a form.

> I seriously wonder why nobody has come up with software to composite t
wo  

> printouts together. Even the mighty £400 Adobe Acrobat software can'
t  

> overprint two PDFs. (Actually, it seems to be impossible to edit the P
DF  

> files in any way, except the move whole pages around or edit metadata.
  

> Which is a piffling amount of functionality for a £400 product. [!])

>
> It seems daft to me that, in the modern age, this is still such a
Acrobat Professional can save the pdf as a .doc

My preference would be to open the pdf in Illustrator or CorelDraw and  

then insert the text.

-Nekar Xenos-

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Invisible wrote:
> (On the other hand, I suppose if I could convince the people in charge 
> to make the PDF form into a *PDF form*, then I could fill it out 
> electronically...)

What bugs me more is when I get forms (usually from the government) as PDF 
files that say "you're allowed to fill this out, but you can't save your 
changes."   Because, you know, there's no way I'd want an electronic copy of 
what I sent to the government about my taxes last year or anything.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Serving Suggestion:
     "Don't serve this any more. It's awful."

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On 01/12/2011 11:08 AM, Invisible wrote:
> I seriously wonder why nobody has come up with software to composite two
> printouts together. Even the mighty £400 Adobe Acrobat software can't
> overprint two PDFs. (Actually, it seems to be impossible to edit the PDF
> files in any way, except the move whole pages around or edit metadata.

You can actually edit pdf files with Foxit PDF Editor,
only the free version adds a mark on edited pages.
The best tool I've found so far is PDF-XChange Viewer
(http://www.portablefreeware.com/?id=1436).
The free version has a textbox annotation tool (and more),
that was sufficient to fill in a huge multi-pages pdfs.
It also lets to export and import the text of annotations.

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On 12-1-2011 12:08, Invisible wrote:
> Last week, I wasted about 20 minutes trying to fill out a form.
>
> The problem is simple. The form contains a box where I'm supposed to
> write a file path. But the pathname goes through 5 subdirectories,
> ending in a 33-character filename. I don't know about you, but I can't
> write that much text in a space less than 10cm across.

would tinyurl or something similar have worked?

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On 13/01/2011 09:44 PM, andrel wrote:
> On 12-1-2011 12:08, Invisible wrote:
>> Last week, I wasted about 20 minutes trying to fill out a form.
>>
>> The problem is simple. The form contains a box where I'm supposed to
>> write a file path. But the pathname goes through 5 subdirectories,
>> ending in a 33-character filename. I don't know about you, but I can't
>> write that much text in a space less than 10cm across.
>
> would tinyurl or something similar have worked?

No. It's not a URL, it's the pathname of a file on one of our servers.

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On 14-1-2011 10:16, Invisible wrote:
> On 13/01/2011 09:44 PM, andrel wrote:
>> On 12-1-2011 12:08, Invisible wrote:
>>> Last week, I wasted about 20 minutes trying to fill out a form.
>>>
>>> The problem is simple. The form contains a box where I'm supposed to
>>> write a file path. But the pathname goes through 5 subdirectories,
>>> ending in a 33-character filename. I don't know about you, but I can't
>>> write that much text in a space less than 10cm across.
>>
>> would tinyurl or something similar have worked?
>
> No. It's not a URL, it's the pathname of a file on one of our servers.

I was aware of that. I tried to ask if something like: 
http://tinyurl.com/6ednez
would have worked.
In my case not on this machine, but a comparable service might have worked.
Or put differently: a path on a machine can be turned into a URL.

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andrel wrote:
> Or put differently: a path on a machine can be turned into a URL.

In all honesty, I have a hard time understanding why in the world you'd put 
the name of a file local to your machine onto a printed form in the first place.

The only vague idea I can come up with is that it was a printed request for 
IT administration to do something with the file while it's on your machine, 
in which case it's actually the name you're filling out and not the contents 
of the file.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Serving Suggestion:
     "Don't serve this any more. It's awful."

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On 15-1-2011 0:33, Darren New wrote:
> andrel wrote:
>> Or put differently: a path on a machine can be turned into a URL.
>
> In all honesty, I have a hard time understanding why in the world you'd
> put the name of a file local to your machine onto a printed form in the
> first place.

me too, but that was outside the scope of my remark.

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On 14/01/2011 11:33 PM, Darren New wrote:
> andrel wrote:
>> Or put differently: a path on a machine can be turned into a URL.
>
> In all honesty, I have a hard time understanding why in the world you'd
> put the name of a file local to your machine onto a printed form in the
> first place.

Which part of the word "server" did you miss?

I have to periodically perform a file restore from tape to prove that 
the backup system actually works. As part of this, I have to note down 
which file I restored. The nearest convenient file is quite deeply buried.

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On 17-1-2011 13:45, Invisible wrote:
> On 14/01/2011 11:33 PM, Darren New wrote:
>> andrel wrote:
>>> Or put differently: a path on a machine can be turned into a URL.
>>
>> In all honesty, I have a hard time understanding why in the world you'd
>> put the name of a file local to your machine onto a printed form in the
>> first place.
>
> Which part of the word "server" did you miss?

I think the operative word in the question is 'printed'. There are ways 
to sign forms electronically that are more secure than a printed 
hardcopy. I guess you have a problem with conservative legislation.

>
> I have to periodically perform a file restore from tape to prove that
> the backup system actually works. As part of this, I have to note down
> which file I restored. The nearest convenient file is quite deeply buried.

Why not create one at a more convenient place and/or define a device or 
shared directory at the spot of the directory you want?

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>> Which part of the word "server" did you miss?
>
> I think the operative word in the question is 'printed'.

Well, yes. Quite why our procedures require this stuff to happen on 
paper in the first place is beyond me. Alternatively, they could just 
print the box slightly bigger so I could write the address in by hand.

>> I have to periodically perform a file restore from tape to prove that
>> the backup system actually works. As part of this, I have to note down
>> which file I restored. The nearest convenient file is quite deeply
>> buried.
>
> Why not create one at a more convenient place and/or define a device or
> shared directory at the spot of the directory you want?

Setting something up specially would require getting authorisation and 
filling out forms and it's basically quite a lot of work for something I 
only have to do once every 6 months.

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Invisible wrote:
> On 14/01/2011 11:33 PM, Darren New wrote:
>> andrel wrote:
>>> Or put differently: a path on a machine can be turned into a URL.
>>
>> In all honesty, I have a hard time understanding why in the world you'd
>> put the name of a file local to your machine onto a printed form in the
>> first place.
> 
> Which part of the word "server" did you miss?

Which part of my second paragraph did you not read?

> I have to periodically perform a file restore from tape to prove that 
> the backup system actually works. As part of this, I have to note down 
> which file I restored. The nearest convenient file is quite deeply buried.

Right. It's the name of a file on your local machine with which you have 
done something, which is exactly what I said in my second paragraph.

(Note that when talking about tinyurl.com, your server is a local machine, yes?)

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Serving Suggestion:
     "Don't serve this any more. It's awful."

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On 17/01/2011 05:46 PM, Darren New wrote:

> Right. It's the name of a file on your local machine with which you have
> done something, which is exactly what I said in my second paragraph.
>
> (Note that when talking about tinyurl.com, your server is a local
> machine, yes?)

It's unusual to refer to a file on a remote file server as a "local 
file", that's all.

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Invisible wrote:
> It's unusual to refer to a file on a remote file server as a "local 
> file", that's all.

If it's in the same room as you, it's a local file. :-) If you're accessing 
it via the URL, it's a remote file.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Serving Suggestion:
     "Don't serve this any more. It's awful."

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>> It's unusual to refer to a file on a remote file server as a "local
>> file", that's all.
>
> If it's in the same room as you, it's a local file. :-) If you're
> accessing it via the URL, it's a remote file.

Sure. I was just pointing out that while needing to refer to a file on a 
desktop machine would be slightly strange, needing to refer to a file on 
a file server is quite common.

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Invisible wrote:
> needing to refer to a file on a file server is quite common.

But ... not on a paper form.

Indeed, I'd suggest that URLs are more commonly written on paper than the 
names of files served by non-URI means.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Serving Suggestion:
     "Don't serve this any more. It's awful."

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On 18/01/2011 05:41 PM, Darren New wrote:
> Invisible wrote:
>> needing to refer to a file on a file server is quite common.
>
> But ... not on a paper form.
>
> Indeed, I'd suggest that URLs are more commonly written on paper than
> the names of files served by non-URI means.

More common, yes. But still, I explained why I need to refer to it. 
Fortunately I only have to do this fairly infrequently.

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