New specification for Canadian cheques

Mike or Penny Novack stepbystepfarm at mtdata.com
Tue Sep 9 09:16:12 EDT 2008


>
> Well, the "yyyymmdd" _does_ have something to do with how the date is 
> formatted! The string must match the date format as it is printed. And 
> checking the box in Preferences that both Derek and I have mentioned 
> will result in the text string "yyyymmdd" (or other as appropriate to 
> your chosen date format) will appear on the check immediately below 
> wherever the date is printed. Set the box in preferences, then print a 
> check. You will see something like
> 20080908
> yyyymmdd
> on the check. I do believe one needs to be using a recent enough 
> version of gtk so that gtk-print is working. But certainly FC9 has that.

That's the sort of confusion to which I was referring. OF COURSE there 
is a relationship in terms of how humans see the resulting check and the 
Canadian regulations for what must appear on a check. What I meant was 
that from the point of view of a computer application how the date DATA 
(the variable data) is formatted and placed on the check has little to 
nothing to do with how constant text or image data appears "in the 
background" just as if it were a pre printed check. In other words, I 
would NOT expect instructions/tutorials to explain those two things in 
the same place.

Yes -- if you chose to alter the way the variable date data is presented 
you need to alter the required explanatory string. But that's just the 
reverse of the situation where if you were filling in pre printed checks 
you would have to conform with the way that explanatory background text 
was printed (if pre printed, you can't change that, so would have to 
make the formatting of the variable data comply).

This is an "expectation" problem. We have end users assuming that the 
application should be linking these two things (changes to the variable 
data formatting) and the explanatory text because they are HUMAN related 
(changes must be coordinated). So that they have to change just one 
thing instead of two.

Michael D Novack, FLMI
(for whom "background printing" and "variable printing" were usually 
controlled by entirely different processes! --- the background by a 
"forms control" language that the printers interpreted and which did far 
more than just background printing -- what sort of stock, color paper, etc.)



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