Printable web forms with "printform"

Printform is a CGI program which accepts input from a user via a World-Wide Web form and then returns it in HTML format suitable for printing from the user's web browser.

Printform is intended for applications which require the submission of paper forms. For paperless submission of forms by e-mail, see the companion yamform program.

Like yamform, printform allows the programs is that printform allows the designer of the form to control the format of the resulting printed report -- not just the input format but the output format as well. However, since the actual printing is done by the end user's web browser, there may be variation from browser to browser and printer to printer.

Attention non-Rice users: Please refrain from setting up forms on non-Rice servers which post to the installation of printform at Rice. If you wish, you may install the printform source at your site, although please note that it is entirely unsupported by Rice.

Sections of this page:

How to set up a form with printform
An example form

How to set up a form with printform

Any WWW data maintainer at Rice may create WWW forms which use the printform program. To do so you will need to take the following steps:

Make sure that you know how to create documents in HTML (HyperText Markup Language) and publish them on a WWW server. If you don't know how, see the WWW documentation in RiceInfo or send e-mail to "riceinfo@rice.edu".
Create an HTML document containing your form. This will call for the use of the <form> tag and one or more of the <input>, <select> and <textarea> tags. An introduction to HTML forms, including a number of examples, can be found in the NCSA Mosaic Fill-Out Form Support document.
In the <action> attribute of the <form> tag, specify the URL of the printform program:
```
<form method=POST action="http://riceinfo.rice.edu/cgi-bin/printform">
```
Within the boundaries of the <form> </form> region, you may include one or more special hidden <input > fields which specify the output format of the resulting printable report. Example:
```
<input name=outform type=hidden value="
                Favorite color report

Name: $name
Favorite color: $color
">
```
Note that there is a limit of 1024 characters for the maximum length of a hidden field. In order to specify an output form longer than 1024 characters, you may break it into several hidden fields named outform1, outform2, outform3, etc. Example:
```
<input name=outform1 type=hidden value="
                Great Big Report

Name: $name
Favorite color: $color
...
">
<input name=outform2 type=hidden value="
Favorite food:  $food
Favorite drink: $drink
...
">
```
Note that the output format can contain the names of other input fields which you define, each preceded by a dollar sign ($). The values input by the user will be substituted for the names of these fields before the printable report is returned.
In order to include HTML tags in your printable report, you will have to escape the less than (<), greater than (>), ampersand (&), and quote (") characters within your hidden fields them using ampersand entities. For example, to use the <h1> tag in your output format, you would specify it as:
```
&lt;h1&gt;
```
Here is an example showing several tags:
```
<input name=outform1 type=hidden value="
                &lt;h1&gt;Favorite Color Report&lt;/h1&gt;

&lt;strong&gt;Name:&lt;/strong&gt; $name
&lt;strong&gt;Favorite color:&lt;/strong&gt; $color
...
">
```

An example form

Here is an example of a WWW form based on printform:

-- Prentiss Riddle (riddle@rice.edu) 1996.08.30