----- Original Message -----
From: "Man-wai Chang" <toylet.toylet@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <php-general@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, September 14, 2006 1:35 PM
Subject: Pre-printed forms
How do you guys and gals use PHP+HTML+CSS to print a report to
preprinted forms with precision?
if the report is to be printed at client side, how do you do it? Via
networked printer?
To start with, I would avoid pre-printed forms it at all possible. The best
option is to design the 'pre-printed' part as a pdf file and then add the
variable parts and print the whole in plain white paper or with a continuous
security background.
PDF is the best solution either way, but anyhow, there are technical and
mechanical problems.
If the printers are single-sheet and they are all the same mode, it is
relatively easy, a few trials will get everything going fine.
If they are different models, each model has different printable areas so
the setup for one is not useful in the next. You will either have to have a
table of settings for each printer model or a separate CSS for each model
and a table of printers with which printer is what model and use the table
settings or the customized CSS for that model.
Also, with HTML + CSS printing, you have the problem that browsers reserve a
space for header and footer on each page and that is not standardized so the
printing area, as defined by the printer model, will be further reduced in
different degrees by the browser.
Another alternative is to have a print trial page available so that if the
client changes printer or notices it is printing off key, they can print the
trial page which won't contain actual data but a grid that the client can
use to align the following printouts. Much like one of those forms ink-jet
printers print when you change cartridges, you would have to provide a scale
relative to some visible line in the pre-printed so that the user enters the
two grid values that best fit the form, you store them in the profile for
that client/printer combination and use it on further printouts.
If the printer to be used are dot-matrix, such as if the form has to be
printed with carbon copies, then you have the further problem that Windows
programs would switch the printer to graphics mode, which slows them to a
crawl. Most pre-printed forms are designed for standard pitches of 6 or 8
lines per inch. Graphics environments let you get out of that grid, but it
slows everything. Using the normal print mode of the printer makes
everything easier since the forms are designed for the printer pitch so once
you get the first line going, all the rest of the page follows.
Unfortunately there is no way, from a normal application in a graphics
environment such as Windows, to use a purely character by character printer,
unless you do an ActiveX control and communicate with the printer via the
serial port.
Many alternatives, no easy solution (except for droping the pre-printed
forms)
Satyam
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