On Wed, 2004-10-20 at 19:12, Horst Herb wrote:
> Unfortunately, the Australian prescription forms are provided by the
> "govermin". They have a serialnumber printed across the back and we are not
> allowed to print these script forms ourselves, just to fill them in.
Arrrgh!
As an aside and TOTALLY off topic.....are physicians responsible for a
block of serial numbers over a period of time?
> It's not the PDF generation on the server that takes time, it's the process of
> PDF-via-browser printing that is the time and interaction consuming PITA.
Point well taken.
> What I need is a single "print" button which, once pressed, starts sending
> output to the printer within a second without any further need for
> interaction - because that's what my desktop software does, and that's what
> my colleagues expect. They won't accept any less.
What format are these prescription forms in; sheets or tractor feed? If
in sheets I assume they are one per page?
> I wasn't able to achieve that with PDF, and if anybody can point me into the
> right direction with CSS, I would be grateful.
>
> An example printing just "test string" absolutely positioned 40 mm from the
> left page margin, and 60 mm from the top of the print margin would do.
>
> When I use the "absolute" positioning in CSS like :
> div.box {position: absolute;
> left: 50mm;
> top: 60mm;
> width: 100mm;
> height: 20mm;
> padding: 5mm;
> font-size: 4mm;
> }
> <DIV class="box">
> This text goes in the box
> </DIV>
>
> and print it with different printers (all with the same pagemargins set), I
> get different positions on the paper.
Right. This reminds me of the days when we had to write (or link)
printer drivers for every application/printer combination. It isn't
just variability of the software but every printer is different as well.
If you *must* use a browser for a client and you can't live with PDF or
Postscript generation on the fly. Then you should look at workflow
modification so you can live with PDF/Postscript generation/printing
timeframe. This is a very realistic option if you show that overall you
are still gaining through the use of IT.
You have likely seen this (and similar articles):
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/goingtoprint/
I believe you'll still have variability in printers when it comes to
absolute positioning. Though these techniques may give you good
referential positioning, getting that top left corner correct is quite
difficult.
I think CSS is the wrong tool for this job.
Cheers,
Tim
