

Show HN: Paperstencil – cross between word processor and web form - selvan
https://github.com/bitstat/paperstencil

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lukeholder
Interesting concept. At our company we use MachForm
([http://www.appnitro.com/](http://www.appnitro.com/))

It really is a php clone (but more powerful) of WUFOO
([http://www.wufoo.com/](http://www.wufoo.com/)) but no subscription needed.

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afternooner
Interesting, it's definitely a competitor to SharePoint if coupled with other
services. There is just something about the graphics that makes me feel it's
dated unfortunately. And apparently vulnerable to Heartbleed.

~~~
selvan
heartbleed vulnerability is gone. Have fixed it.

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aytekin
Congratulations! This is the best implementation of narrative form builder I
have seen. And, it is admirable that you are releasing the code for your
service with Apache license.

We (JotForm) tried to do one on an internal hackathon (
[http://www.jotform.com/narrative-forms/](http://www.jotform.com/narrative-
forms/) ) but it didn't work really well and we didn't receive much excitement
from our users about it. So, we didn't develop it further. But, I've always
found narrative forms amazing. I wonder why more sites are not using it.

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frik
Maybe something to replace the deprecated Microsoft InfoPath form services on
SharePoint server.

If one can write "form rules" in JavaScript or like InfoPath in a graphical
rule language, that would be awesome.

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bhattisatish
Looks good. I love the concept. I have couple of questions:

Is it possible to create lookup tables which then can be used in the form for
data input? For e.g. Contacts: that get populated from my address book table?
etc ...

Also is there a workflow process in the pipeline?

Good work!

~~~
selvan
Code shall be easily extended to accommodate these features. Shoot an email to
selvan@bitstat.com, will help you on that.

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adinb
This looks handy, I might use this as a part of a super-side project to get my
73yo relative to stop creating exams using MS Word. (Years and years of
exams/tests, locked up inside zillions of MS Word files!)

Can this handle nested conditional forms?

~~~
selvan
It doesn't have support for nested forms.

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joeimfeld
I've got to recommend SaaS Formstack
([http://www.formstack.com](http://www.formstack.com))

\- All the correct security procedures are taken care of by them plus there
team is extremely responsive.

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elwell
Overall design of product is not very good. Also, you should probably not use
the word "Render" for a consumer app; maybe "Publish" or "View"?

~~~
selvan
it is our early release of the product (More focus was on the functionality).
We will improve look and feel (such as icons, theme, etc) in general in our
next iteration.

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edwardio
This looks great! It would look better if the font wasn't monospaced (if
you're looking for suggestions, I love the free Google font "Oxygen").

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elwell
I think that serif font looks bad. Especially when it's small like in the
footer.

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stfnfhrmnn
looks good!

Is there some functionality to save and resume later (from end-customer
perspective)? Would be nice if I could give out unique URLs to a form, which
then autosave anything entered there.

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username42
A datepicker seems missing.

