This is not a direct answer to the question on forms, but an unsolicited rave
about a program I discovered recently.  For $200 I purchased a copy of
OmniForm by Caere, makers of OmniPage, one of the best OCR programs.  With
OmniForm you can scan or fax a form into your PC.  It performs the magic of
optical character recognition and permits the user to fill out the form
on-screen and then print it out.

It also maintains its own database - a very handy feature. Let's say you have
ten application forms.  Fill them out on screen and print them.  Each form is
saved - field by field - in the program's data base.  It exports and imports
most common db formats.

There is some tinkering involved to get the forms just right, but once that's
done, you're in business.  I bought it recently when I was working on an NEH
proposal.  Ran all the forms through the program and saved a ton of time.
The numerical fields perform calculations.

My wife, who's a nursing home administrator, recruited me to set up a new
patient form from HCFA.  Needed an easy way to enter data and maintain a data
base.  Her finance guy is still doing double back flips.

Only drawback is that the files are in a proprietary format.  The data can be
exported - or you can import data from another program, but you can't use the
form itself in any other program.  Another nice feature is that it has a
powerful form design tools if you want to start from scratch.

The current version is Win95 only, but they throw in v.1, which is for
Windows 3.1.  It's available at most mail order houses and the larger stores.
I recommend it for anyone dealing with government forms.  Something we all
need to do every now and then.

Andrew
-------------------------------------
Andrew J. Grant, Ph.D.
Director of Foundation and Corporate Relations
The Jewish Theological Seminary of America
3080 Broadway, New York, New York 10027
Voice: (212) 678-8934; FAX: (212) 678-8941
E-mail: xxxxxx@jtsa.edu (Andrew J. Grant)
Date: 08/06/96
Time: 09:37:47