Ain't Technology Wonderful

What do they do when they need hard-copy?

I have just downloaded a council form (for interment of my S-I-L's ashes in her parents grave), that is clearly a non-editable scan, that has to be filled in and signed by hand and then either posted or scanned and emailed.

Without a printer, I'd either have to go to a library, wait for an office day, or request a copy by post.

Mine is a couple of years old and still manages 2 or 3 days between charges. Depends on how much I use it.

F****ng map of Addenbrookes is more usual :-( And they don't keep that up to date either

No. What you do is get a copy of Scribus and of GIMP

Gimp will export the downloaded pages as e.g. png. Import those into Scribus as images, and then use text boxes over the top to create an email-able multi-page PDF.

Cost less than buying a printer and scanner

Latest firefox has built-in PDF form filling and annotations.

I thought you'd a private room for that ;-)

You cant edit non editable PDFs

I have been known to print out the form, fill it in and sign it, then scan it and send the scan back as an email attachment.

Depends what you mean by non-editable?

Some use what is basically an honour system "don't edit/print/save" flag

some files are secured/encrypted and need a password to unlock

or (as I think the O/P meant) the file might be one big image per page, but you can overlay text fields onto it.

I mean a PDF that has no forms in it

Well that always works.

The new firefox lets you edit a PDF like that (for encrypted ones, it requires the password, but it saves it back with the password.)

Label maker machine, obvs. Available from the bay of Ali for a few yuan.

One day I'll splash out on the one that prints heatshrink so I can label all my wires.

Theo

Well I just checked. Firefox cannot edit ordinary PDFs.

v135.0 ?

But I don't need to buy either, as I already have them. The printer cost me £5 second-hand (I bought it as "for parts" ... all that was wrong was a missing power lead and it had only printed 2500 pages) and £50 worth of toners (it's a colour laser printer), lasts for years.

This week alone I have printed out a number of different versions of 16 drawings for rewiring my Land Rover (I'm adding various circuits and splitting others over 17 fuses, instead of the 3 originals).

That's it, but it's a whole lot easier to just print, fill by hand and scan, instead of lining up multiple text text boxes and filling them in.

Yes. That would be really useful at the moment - writing on them with a paint pen is not very good.

Just tried it on a Mac - v.good!

My solicitor sent me a document by post with dithered grey backgrounds, by the time that was filled-in/scanned it was so big their email system wouldn't accept it back as an attachment.