I know this is a freeBSD mailing list, but I didn't know where else to ask this question. I've recently switch to FreeBSD 4.8 (great OS btw), and I've been so pleasantly surprised that i'm now planning to switch over my dad's firm over to freeBSD. There computers/software are rapidly getting old and obselete, and microsoft's price/security is...well expensive/crap. I can pretty much convert everything they do there to freeBSD without a problem. There is only 1 thing I'm not sure how to do, and this is my question. The employees have to fill out forms for the clients. Now these forms, when printed, must look exactly like predefined government forms (yes it's all legal). Also, since it's the government, and they need to justify a few salaries, they change the forms every now and then. I was wondering if anyone knows of a project that already exists to create/fillout forms like this, or if not an existing project, maybe just a library, a module, a something where I could start reading. Basically I want to create legal like forms to fill out for clients. On a more BSD question, with freeBSd 4.8 release, does anyone else get an error after installing mozilla (no running window found)? If so any workarounds? Yes I updated my port tree. Thanks in advance, Jd
> I know this is a freeBSD mailing list, but I didn't know where else to > ask this question. I've recently switch to FreeBSD 4.8 (great OS btw), > and I've been so pleasantly surprised that i'm now planning to switch > over my dad's firm over to freeBSD. There computers/software are > rapidly getting old and obselete, and microsoft's price/security > is...well expensive/crap. I can pretty much convert everything they do > there to freeBSD without a problem. > > There is only 1 thing I'm not sure how to do, and this is my question. > The employees have to fill out forms for the clients. Now these forms, > when printed, must look exactly like predefined government forms (yes > it's all legal). Also, since it's the government, and they need to > justify a few salaries, they change the forms every now and then. I was > wondering if anyone knows of a project that already exists to > create/fillout forms like this, or if not an existing project, maybe > just a library, a module, a something where I could start reading. > Basically I want to create legal like forms to fill out for clients.It sounds like you want Adobe Acrobat (the full product, not the reader.) With this you can create fillable-form-PDF files, which anyone with Acrobat Reader can fill out and print, making them look nice and pretty :) Adobe's products are available for Windows and Linux (but not FreeBSD). However, you might be able to get the Linux version to work on FreeBSD via the Linux emulator. Alternatively, you could keep one Windows machine around the office to do this kind of work on. -- Matt Emmerton
On Sun, Apr 13, 2003 at 03:14:42PM -0400, Jd wrote:> > There is only 1 thing I'm not sure how to do, and this is my question. > The employees have to fill out forms for the clients. Now these forms, > when printed, must look exactly like predefined government forms (yes > it's all legal). Also, since it's the government, and they need to > justify a few salaries, they change the forms every now and then. I was > wondering if anyone knows of a project that already exists to > create/fillout forms like this, or if not an existing project, maybe > just a library, a module, a something where I could start reading. > Basically I want to create legal like forms to fill out for clients.I have no answer for creating forms, but for filling out forms the Linux version of Adobe's Acrobat reader works fine under FreeBSD. I've used it to fill out govt tax forms from www.irs.gov. See the acroread5 port.> On a more BSD question, with freeBSd 4.8 release, does anyone else get > an error after installing mozilla (no running window found)? If so any > workarounds? Yes I updated my port tree.The message itself is not an error, just Mozilla's comment that there is no *other* copy of Mozilla already running. If the Mozilla window never appears you may well have a font problem - check the archives for the various things to try. -- Barney Wolff http://www.databus.com/bwresume.pdf I'm available by contract or FT, in the NYC metro area or via the 'Net.
On Sun, 13 Apr 2003, Jd wrote:>On a more BSD question, with freeBSd 4.8 release, does anyone else get >an error after installing mozilla (no running window found)? If so any >workarounds? Yes I updated my port tree.Any chance you're using tvtwm or Enlightenment? http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=122498 Ian
On Sunday 13 April 2003 03:14 pm, Jd wrote:> [...wants to convert his father's office over to FreeBSD...] > > There is only 1 thing I'm not sure how to do, and this is my question. > The employees have to fill out forms for the clients. Now these forms, > when printed, must look exactly like predefined government forms (yes > it's all legal). Also, since it's the government, and they need to > justify a few salaries, they change the forms every now and then. I was > wondering if anyone knows of a project that already exists to > create/fillout forms like this, or if not an existing project, maybe > just a library, a module, a something where I could start reading. > Basically I want to create legal like forms to fill out for clients.Others have suggested Adobe Acrobat, but if you don't have some way to get the form into the system to create the fill-in form in the first place, that won't help. I don't know if Adobe Acrobat (the full version) can take a document from a scanner and generate a fill-in form, but it might. Check http://www.adobe.com for details. You might, as some have suggested, have to keep a Windows box around (perhaps using an older licensed copy of Windows 98 or NT4 or Windows 2000) to do this conversion, or make one of your boxes dual-boot for those rare times when the forms change and you have to create new versions of your fill-in forms. Once you've created the fill-in form, it can be served from anywhere (file server over NFS, or web server, etc.). You can even capture the filled-in form for posterity by printing to a file from Acrobat reader rather than to a printer, but that copy will have degraded quality, so you'll want to print directly to the printer, too. What would be slicker than cat snot is to use web forms with the usual pull-down menus and text boxes to generate PostScript to overlay on top of a PostScript image of the blank form, and send *that* to the printer, but that's a little more advanced. Once question you have not asked, but which is lurking, is this: is your proposed user base sophisticated enough to have FreeBSD on their desktops? With a preconfigured window manager and a graphical login, it's not as bad as a naked console prompt, but often, FreeBSD (or Linux, or replacement-OS-of-choice) typically requires some care and feeding, because there are always corner cases in a business environment in which a user's desired task requires some setup, configuration, or troubleshooting to work. <heresy>This is where Windows kicks free OS butt: it's just plain easier to use.</heresy> Yeah, you can't do a lot of the things that you can do on a UNIX-like platform, but the things you *can* do are typically easier for the typical office worker to accomplish. Yes, my desktops all run FreeBSD save my accounting machine, which has to run Windows to run QuickBooks Pro. There are also the occasional websites-that-only-work-with-IE (e.g., www.fidelity.com). -- Chris BeHanna Software Engineer (Remove "bogus" before responding.) behanna@bogus.zbzoom.net Turning coffee into software since 1990.
On Sun, Apr 13, 2003 at 03:14:42PM -0400, Jd wrote:> On a more BSD question, with freeBSd 4.8 release, does anyone else get > an error after installing mozilla (no running window found)? If so any > workarounds? Yes I updated my port tree.You have to rebuild the font cache as root (!!!) root# fc-cache -v -f Otherwise no application will run, that uses the fontcache (lots of applications: xchat2, gimp, ...). I found this fix via searching in Google for the error message. Though the writer stated out, that it doesn't fix things for him it actually does ! Best regards Andreas /// -- Andreas Klemm - Powered by FreeBSD 4.8-STABLE Need a magic printfilter today ? -> http://www.apsfilter.org/ -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 187 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-stable/attachments/20030414/7cef8bfc/attachment.bin