Required Fields for Printable Forms Page ? ? ?

Greetings Gang! Back with a forms question.
I have created a form that is a "Print" only form. i.e. it does not
get submitted so no need for a cgi script. All I want is for the party
to input the info into the fields on the web page then print and turn
in to their respective Human Resource department. My problem is I want
to make some of the field "Required" and/or mandatory. Is there any
line I can include in the field tag to require the field to be filled
in before it will allow the party to continue or print the form?

Once again my thanks for your help and info.
Tha RagMan

Tha RagMan wrote:

> Greetings Gang! Back with a forms question.
> I have created a form that is a "Print" only form. i.e. it does not
> get submitted so no need for a cgi script. All I want is for the party
> to input the info into the fields on the web page then print and turn
> in to their respective Human Resource department. My problem is I want
> to make some of the field "Required" and/or mandatory. Is there any
> line I can include in the field tag to require the field to be filled
> in before it will allow the party to continue or print the form?

You can do this using JavaScript, or if you want to be 100% sure:
JavaScript *and* a CGI script. The latter if the former is off.

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Tha RagMan wrote:

> Greetings Gang! Back with a forms question.
> I have created a form that is a "Print" only form. i.e. it does not
> get submitted so no need for a cgi script. All I want is for the party
> to input the info into the fields on the web page then print and turn
> in to their respective Human Resource department. My problem is I want
> to make some of the field "Required" and/or mandatory. Is there any
> line I can include in the field tag to require the field to be filled
> in before it will allow the party to continue or print the form?

The only way you can do this is to submit the form to a CGI program that
will check to see if the form has been filled out. That program would
produce a web page, or output in some other printable form, that the
user can print.

You have no control over when a user prints a web page, or which fields
are filled out when he prints the page.

On Mon, 02 May 2005 1703 -0600, Scott Bryce
<sbryce@scottbryce.com> wrote:

>Tha RagMan wrote:
>> I have created a form that is a "Print" only form. i.e. it does not
>> get submitted so no need for a cgi script. All I want is for the party
>> to input the info into the fields on the web page then print and turn
>> in to their respective Human Resource department. My problem is I want
>> to make some of the field "Required"

>The only way you can do this is to submit the form to a CGI program that
>will check to see if the form has been filled out. That program would
>produce a web page, or output in some other printable form, that the
>user can print.
>
>You have no control over when a user prints a web page, or which fields
>are filled out when he prints the page.

Thanks for the response and info peeps. Once I thought my way through
it I suspected what you have confirmed. I was hoping for an easy fix
but alas, no such thing. Oh well!

Thanks so much for the help. It is much appreciated.
Tha RagMan

On Mon, 2 May 2005, Tha RagMan wrote:

> Greetings Gang! Back with a forms question.
> I have created a form that is a "Print" only form. i.e. it does not
> get submitted so no need for a cgi script. All I want is for the party
> to input the info into the fields on the web page then print and turn
> in to their respective Human Resource department. My problem is I want
> to make some of the field "Required" and/or mandatory. Is there any
> line I can include in the field tag to require the field to be filled
> in before it will allow the party to continue or print the form?
>
> Once again my thanks for your help and info.
> Tha RagMan

As far as I know, there is no reliable way to do that. Perhaps you should
use a script to verify that the data is filled in and then present them
with a page with the filled-out data as preformatted text (not in a form)
and have them print out *that* page. An alternative is to visibly mark
some fields as mandatory and have a policy of rejecting any printout with
the data missing.

1. Client-side scripting to ensure that a field is filled out won't
work if JavaScript is turned off for the browser.

2. A program may ensure that some data is filled in in a field. It can't
ensure that the data is correct.

3. Some browsers (such as lynx) omit any data in a form when they print
out a page with a form. This:
Name: George_Smith_______________
Age: 47__
Weight: 219_ (*) pounds (_) kg
gets printed as:
Name: ___________________________
Age: ____
Weight: ____ (*) pounds (_) kg

What should be done also depends on the data requested. I know someone
with only one name. Forms that require a given name and a surname and
reject any entry without both are one of his peeves. A form that
requires a telephone number may be filled out by someone who doesn't
have a telephone.

--
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">To what? Any suggestions?"
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-- Matt Probert in alt.www.webmaster, March 20, 2005

Norman L. DeForest wrote

> Sometimes people overlook the non-technical obvious solution.

Don't they just!

--
Charles Sweeney
http://CharlesSweeney.com

On Wed, 4 May 2005 00:48:06 -0300, "Norman L. DeForest"
<af380@chebucto.ns.ca> wrote:

>> >An alternative is to visibly mark
>> >some fields as mandatory and have a policy of rejecting any printout with
>> >the data missing.

>Sometimes people overlook the non-technical obvious solution.

Excellent info Norm. Thanks for sharing
Tha RagMan