Integrity of forms

[Alan Burkitt-Gray]

Brian Gladman wrote .... 
	.... My conclusion was that the idea that 'printed' text is
	hard to change is very ingrained.  And, of course, since modern
computer
	based scanning and printing is very affordable, accurate and easy to
use,
	there are probably all sorts of scams that are now easily possible
(and, I
	suspect, less risky than copying banknotes).
	onstituted a separate "layer".

	.... In MS Word (and I suspect other word
	processors as well) it would not be difficult for the form
originator to
	write Visual Basic code that checked the incoming form against an
original
	whilst also putting the entries into a database. 

	

There are fairly few programs in use for design and layout of forms and
other printed documents - mainly MS Word for basic wordprocessing and
document layout, QuarkXpress for fancier publication-quality layout - and
all of these are easily available. Most designers use a limited range of
fonts (Times New Roman, Helvetica, Univers and so on) which are very
standardised - though even fancy fonts are available relatively easily. With
care a document can be reproduced exactly - there's no magic in it - and
printed on a good quality desktop printer. It's not like in the old days,
where printing was a mysterious art and a document printed by one print
works would inevitably look different from a document done by another. 

On the other point, MS Word has a version control system (Tools > Track
Changes > Compare Documents in Word 97) which works quite well and could be
automated.

Alan





-
ALAN BURKITT-GRAY, Editor, Government Computing
The independent magazine about information age public service,
for the people who are going to make it happen
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