[Psml] Paperless Reporting and Record Keeping

[Robert Miller]

What was I thinking? In my first response I should have mentioned that there
are free PDF creators that "print" to a PDF file. Some are true freeware but
quite a few are only free trials so read all the fine print first. Search on
"Free PDF Converter" with Google, Live Search, Yahoo, Lycos or whatever you
use and you will find a bunch of alternatives.

 

Sorry I forgot that in the first place.

 

Cheers,

 

Bob

  _____  

From: psml-bounces at usps.org [mailto:psml-bounces at usps.org] On Behalf Of Dan
Bartell
Sent: Saturday, March 08, 2008 10:03 AM
To: boatsafe at comcast.net
Cc: United States Power Squadrons Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Psml] Paperless Reporting and Record Keeping

 

Actually if you have full Acrobat you can turn a PDF document into a form
with fields and actions upon submission.  Tom Brinka has done that with the
Educational Department order forms which go to cgi scripts running on the
server and it works quite well.  You can partially fill out the forms and
save them as templates on your own machine.  However it takes full Acrobat
which is a bit pricey.
Cheers,
Dan
At 09:28 3/8/2008, Barclay M. Thomas wrote:



Dan, R.D., and all,
Not that I am an expert but, while Rich Text Format (RTF) is easily read and
written by most word processing programs, any document formatting is often
lost or skewed in the transition. Portable Document Format (PDF) is designed
by default to retain all formatting of the original document no matter what
platform or program it is viewed in.
Yes, it may take another step or two to save a file in PDF, but it makes for
a better archive since all the data will remain in the right place. You can
always save the PDF as a text (.txt) file if you want to alter it.

I have not paid too much attention to what is out there in terms of PDF
creation/conversion programs, but there are a lot and many are not too
expensive or are free. Of course you get what you pay for. I do know there
are some open-source programs that are quite capable though. Take a look at
<http://sourceforge.net>, but don't get overwhelmed by all the projects
(grin).

That being said, it would be nice if the forms on the National website had
all the data input spaces (i.e.: quantity, price, etc.) created as text
fields so a blank original can be downloaded and save as a template, then
filled out as needed. Of course I am only looking for someone else to do the
work so I don't have to. But once it's done, it's done.

Enjoy the weekend,
-- 
P/C Barclay M. Thomas, AP
Saybrook Power Squadron, D-1


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_______________________________________________
P/C Dan Bartell, SN  
SEO - Shallotte River Sail & Power Squadron - D27 (NC)
Member USPS National Information Technology Committee  

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