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Admin
FieldType: Text FieldName: T5ZA1 FieldNameAlt: T5ZA1 FieldFlags: 25165824 FieldJustification: Left FieldMinLength: 5 FieldMaxLength: 5 FieldDefault: Frist
Edit Admin
The Boulder is conflicted over the use of a bitmask (25165824 = 0x1800000) in a PDF. Are we still in the era of saving bytes? Please reassure The Boulder that it was converted to separate columns when writing to the database . . .
Edit Admin
I'd like to see one of those forms actually... Because if you look at, say, tax forms where I live, all the fields are numbered. And for this kind of stuff, skipping "O" particularly makes sense, as it eliminates the risk of users confusing it for zero.
Edit Admin
Oh and I see an opportunity to be the frist one to mention growing fucks in those fields.
Edit Admin
True . . . but then it seems obvious that "I" should be skipped as well.
Edit Admin
The "flags" looks to come from the PDF spec. If I'm reading it right, the fields have the "Comb" (split into single-character boxes) and "DoNotScroll" (exactly what it says) flags set. Not really relevant information in this case, but it looks like Sally's code is just dumping the field definitions.
Edit Admin
This is not a WTF. We don't no the background, but I'm sure there is some documentation out somewhere which explains exactly the meaning of each field.
And it makes sense because each field is easily identifiable. For instance, if you want to marry your grandmother's stepsister, some documentation may tell you "fill out field C3 to C5", and there will be no discussion what exact fields these could be and where to find them.
Admin
FWIW, I'm currently working in the aircraft industry. Some days it feels like there's a rule against naming anything sensibly. Everything is either numbered or has an absurd acronym. If you encountered "ARINC 424" without a context, would you have any clue that it's the file layout for a standard list of airports, runways, and approach points?
Edit Admin
Your analysis is probably approximately correct, but it's worth noting that they could have separated the common prefix T5Z from the actual field names e.g. T5Z_C3, which would have made the end result more immediately readable. (In the long run, of course, we learn to "see" that name T5ZC3 as the two parts, but it sure does make it harder to read initially.)
Edit Admin
That's a good point, but a PDF is one place where if one so chooses, they can all but guarantee what the characters the user sees look like. If one counts on choosing their styling such that an attentive reader can tell as many problem characters apart without comparison as possible (setting aside for a moment whether that's a good idea), then O is probably the hardest one to do that with. There are designs for most other potentially confusing characters that are unlikely to be confusing (consider Cascadia Mono or Ubuntu Mono, for example), but while a slashed or dotted 0 might make me pretty confident I'm not looking at an O, an O without any 0 near it is probably the least likely for me to be sure about.