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From: flowers@csrd.uiuc.edu (Craig Flowers)
Subject: Re: 4D : Printing irregular sized forms
Message-ID: <1991Apr18.221200.26259@csrd.uiuc.edu>
Sender: news@csrd.uiuc.edu (news)
Organization: UIUC Center for Supercomputing Research and Development
References: <9104171436.aa28855@PARIS.ICS.UCI.EDU>
Date: Thu, 18 Apr 91 22:12:00 GMT
Lines: 26

There is a forms printing package by Adobe called TrueForm.  It comes with 
a module that can be loaded into 4D thus allowing 4D to print its data in 
ways described by TrueForm templates.  It works very nice, although a tad 
slow.  TrueForm allows many different printing sizes and areas and can probably better handle odd sized forms.

To create a TrueForm template, you need to scan a form into TrueForm.  
Then, set up where you want your fields to print on the form.  It's very 
easy and fast to set up a decent form.  To get a PERFECT form takes double 
the effort.  (One of those diminishing returns things.)

TrueForm can display the scanned form on the screen and allow data entry.  
It even has some database capabilities.  Many times, depending on the dpi 
of the scanning, the form will look messy on the screen and be hard to 
read.  It creates a perfect duplication hard copy though.  TrueForm can 
also import and export data.

We use 4D to enter the data and print via the TrueForm add-in module to 
save the step of tranferring data from TrueForm to 4D.  We get it all done 
(save data to db and print form) in one step.  I think these two packages 
make a very nice setup.

-Craig Flowers  (flowers@csrd.uiuc.edu)