Sign-up sheet maker: type what it is for, print a sheet of lines to write on

What is on the paper

• Your words at the top, up to 60 characters, and under them up to 3 lines of 70 characters: when, where, who to ask. With no words, Sign-up sheet is printed there.
• A column for each heading you type, up to 5, 20 characters each, with empty lines under it to write on by hand. With no heading, the sheet has one column, Name.
• A number in front of every line, unless you untick it, so anyone can see how many have signed.
• Upright or sideways paper, US Letter or A4. Sideways gives wider columns and fewer lines.
• Three heights of line. On paper a roomy line is a little under half an inch high, a regular line a little over a third of an inch, a tight line a little over a quarter.
• When there is more than one sheet, each has the words at the top again, smaller, the headings again, and Sheet 2 of 3 at the foot.

A list of things to sign up for

• Up to 30 things, 28 characters each: a dish, a job, a time, a seat in a car. Things after the 30th are left out, and the page names them.
• Each thing is printed down the left side, with 1 to 5 empty lines beside it: one line for every person who can sign up for it. Every thing gets the same number of lines.
• The heading over the list is yours, up to 16 characters: I will bring, Job, Time. With none, What is printed there.
• A thing is written on its first line, and again at the top of a new sheet when its lines run over.
• The same line twice is kept twice, so two lines that both say Driver make two drivers.
• The list sets the number of lines. 6 things with 2 lines each is 12 lines.

With no list

• As many empty lines as one sheet holds, or a number you choose, 1 to 100.
• With a short title and nothing under it, an upright sheet holds 18 roomy lines, 23 regular lines or 30 tight lines. A sideways sheet holds 13, 16 or 21.
• Lines under the title take room, so the sheet then holds a line or two fewer. The page says the number.
• More lines than one sheet holds go on to the next sheet. 100 regular lines on upright paper take 5 sheets.

How the page fits the words

• Nothing is made smaller to fit, and nothing is hidden. Words too wide for their room go on to another line, and the row or the band of headings gets higher to hold them.
• A single word wider than its column is cut where it stops fitting, and goes on below.
• Long words at the top are set a little smaller than short ones, and take a second line when they need it.
• The list of things takes three tenths of the width. The columns to write in share the rest in equal parts, and the page says how wide each one comes out. Under about 1.2 inches it tells you that is narrow for handwriting.
• The same words and choices give the same sheet every time.

What this page does not do

• It does not collect anything. Nobody can sign up on the screen; the lines are for a pen. Who signed is on the paper and nowhere else.
• It does not know what is right to ask people for. It prints the headings you type. A sheet on a wall or a table can be read by everyone who comes after, so a phone number written there is seen by all of them.
• It cannot make one column wider than another, or give one thing more lines than another.
• It knows no dates and no times: an hour in the list is words to it, and it does not put them in order.
• It draws no pictures or logos, and prints in black and grey with one shaded band.
• It keeps nothing: close the page and the words are gone.
• It has been tried in one browser’s print preview (Chromium, saved as PDF), not on paper from a real printer. A printer that shrinks the page to fit makes the lines a little lower than said above.

Every time the page is built, a program checks 50 examples worked by hand. Then it types 2,000 made-up sheets, some with accents, Ñ, signs, very long words and lines past the limits, and draws them the way the page does. A second reader, written separately, takes each drawing apart with its own numbers for the paper. It checks that the words at the top, the headings and the things are all there, whole and in order; that every line of words is inside its own column, its own row and the sheet; that no row is lower than asked and none runs past the foot; that the numbers run 1, 2, 3 across the sheets; that a sheet is only left when the next row would not fit; and that the number of lines is the one asked for. That checks the page’s own sums, not what a real printer does with them.