Scripting Government PDF Forms and Making Safer ID Copies
Government PDFs distributed as fillable forms often cannot actually handle Thai text. Subdivided fields let digits run over the borders, and tone marks collide with vowels above the line. This article covers listing field names first, filling the fields and flattening them into page content, drawing Thai text with a font that includes all the vowel marks, and making actual-size ID copies with purpose-specific watermarks.
SketchUp Drawing Sheets with Automatic Labels and Dimensions
A finished model is not ready for submission yet. What the authorities accept is a set of paper sheets with building numbers, dimension lines, a north arrow, and a scale. This article covers extracting geometry from the model as numbers, rendering a top ortho view as black lines on white, and letting a script place numbers and dimension lines without overlaps, with overrides for individual items.
Rebuilding an Off-Scale PDF Plan at Real Dimensions
Presentation plans are often drawn block by block, with different scales for the x and y axes and different scales again for each room. Calibrating the whole page once and tracing it gets everything wrong. This article covers extracting coordinates from paper into metres by recalculating the scale for every room, counting objects with colour-blob BFS instead of by eye, and drawing them back into a model at their real dimensions.
Printing Dozens of Government Forms from HTML with Correct Margins
A government submission document system where users click Print in their browsers and every sheet must fit within its margins, from measuring the actual printable area in millimeters and repeating headers and footers without position fixed, to four image frame types for different documents and automated overflow checks with Playwright instead of inspecting every sheet.
Generating Thai PDF Quotes with Chromium and the Pitfalls I Hit
Building a system to generate PDF quotations from HTML with Chromium for multiple companies in a group and multiple templates, from an Executable doesn't exist error caused by looking for the wrong headless shell, to A4 layout and pagination, sanitizing Thai filenames, and a token-based document numbering system where an accidental slash broke the path.