Categories
Scribbles Technology

Fillable PDF

I had to change a membership form for a non-profit organization from a PDF to a fillable PDF.

We had text boxes, radio buttons and date fields.

In comes to LibreOffice Writer to the rescue!

You can use the Form controls to add form elements to your form:

The position and size controls allow you exactly size your controls and manage the X and Y positions too:

The radio buttons can be assigned a group so that they may be chosen once

Once you are done adding the form elements, you can export it as a PDF and test it. The great thing is that the PDF is fillable and saveable.

Get your LibreOffice Writer here:

Writer | LibreOffice – Free Office Suite – Based on OpenOffice – Compatible with Microsoft

NOTE: It is better to save the document as ODT and not as DOCX. If you save as DOCX, Microsoft Word tends to open it and mess with the LibreOffice positioning.

Categories
Technology

Are you an innovator or a laggard?

CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=113543416

I like to put myself in the “Early Majority” part of this graph.

I see my clients sometimes in the “Late Majority” part of this graph and I try my best to convince with the right arguments that it is time to not become a “Laggard”.

We use LTS releases on software when we are working on projects and keep an eye of the Software Lifecycle to ensure that the version is still in use.

If you have a client that is still using Windows 7 then you could possibly be in the category “Laggard” unless you have the “Extended Security Update Year 3”: Windows 7 – Microsoft Lifecycle | Microsoft Docs

If you have a client that is using Windows 10 then you might want them to be using at least the “Version 20H2”: Windows 7 – Microsoft Lifecycle | Microsoft Docs

For example I recently switched to using Windows 11 for my work computer.

This way, I can possibly call myself an “Early Adopter” to kick off 2022!