ouch: the beginning of the end

[Richmond Mathewson]

By the way . . .

I have to send various PDF forms to my sons in the USA and Germany with 
my signature on the original PDF.

I open the PDF in GIMP, add a layer to the relevant page, and overlay a 
PNG of my signature
(I signed my name using my Wacom tablet into GIMP and extracted the pen 
colours from the
white background to make a PNG image of my signature surrounded by 
transparency), then export the
page as a PDF.

My sons then print out the PDFs with my signature on them where they are.

Of course this has nothing whatsoever to do with LiveCode.

Richmond.


On 3/3/17 5:24 pm, Dr. Hawkins via use-livecode wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 2, 2017 at 5:02 PM, Alejandro Tejada via use-livecode <
> use-livecode at lists.runrev.com> wrote:
>
>> I have used LiveCode (then MetaCard) to write content
>> in PDF templates, so I do not understand the requirement
>> that file should have no changes.
>>
> The file I upload needs to be indistinguishable from the pdf the court
> issues to fill in at any arbitrary density.
>
> At the moment, I'm simply recreating by pasting into fields.  What *should* be
> happening is placing fields over an eps made from the court's own pdf.
>
> This particular form was the breaking point:
> http://www.nvb.uscourts.gov/downloads/mmm/forms/NVB105-3_OrderDebtorsMtnReferraltoMMM.pdf
>
> I have created paragraph by paragraph, but I now have a clerk insisting
> that it be this exact pdf--so I have to go back to my original plan.  With
> livecode, this *should* happen by turning it into page by page eps's,
> putting each on a card, and laying fields over them, and then "printing" to
> a pdf file.
>
> Unfortunately, due to the lack of eps support, the only possible way is to
> make png's, put the fields in front of those, delete the png when printing,
> and then use shell tools (pdftk, pdfjar, pdftools, etc.)  to overlay each
> page of my livecode output onto the form pdf.
>
> This is fairly straightforward on unix (mac, linux).  However, I need to
> insure that the third party software is installed, and for good measure,
> support at least two ways of doing it.
>
> Windows?  beats me.
>
> iOS?  I'd be shocked if the tools are there.  I'd have to license the code.
>
> android?  beats me again.
>
> But all in all, I've lost "write once".
>
>