[Wolves] php generated text over image or rewrite entire doc?

[Wayne Morris]

Hi all,

My latest 'bugger about for hours with my website' is this:

I have some pretty wordy legal docs that need to be filled in by 
students and then filed - currently done by them handwriting all the 
info into the spaces
on the form - job done.
but I have all the info on my sql database - so retrieving that and 
shoving it onto a printable php page is well within my meagre talents.
Benefit - print only 'ready to file' documents, rather than hundreds of 
blanks which get cocked up and binned, and also trackable - 'form 
completed'.

The next obvious step is for me to populate the form from mysl/php, 
print it and they just then sign the bottom, but which is the least time 
consuming/ code writing wise:

1) Just scan each document , set it as page background and float the 
text boxes over the appropriate spaces on the form - apart from I 
haven't the foggiest where to start with
this, I can forsee a lot of bother setting up the positions of text box 
relative to the form space - the text overflowing past the space over 
the rest of the text etc.

2) Retype or OCR each document as text file, and then just create the 
page as per normal php page - easy peasy - looks pretty whatever the 
text field contents - but possible
typo on scan/retype might mean a 'I promise not to kill you' becomes 'I 
promise to kill you' and its lawyer city because you deviated from the 
approved document...

Opinions, how to's gratefully accepted.

cheers

Wayne