Linux/Kubuntu and submitting a job application

[woodsmoke]

When I was at an American Chemical Society meeting I was offered a job teaching online out of state, which I can do an won't lose my retirement, and that will help pay for the Obamacare insurance hikes I got a few months ago.

It was a kind of "really time critical" so:

I went to the colleges HR site and found that...........surprise, surprise.... they have ONLY a downloadable .pdf to fill out by hand.... but.....they say that they take "electronic submissions".

Ok in the windblows world for me to be able to actually place text on the .pdf I would have to PAY a nice chunk of change to do what "should" be free.. and it really "should" be free, I mean this is something that the average person just should be able to do.

So, I tried all of the Kubuntu apps and found that the only one that would work was GIMP.

I could click a "text" box over a blank line, type in the required information and move on to the next blank.

At the end of the page, it was a three page form, I then exported the page as .pdf.

I repeated with the other application pages.

I had previously scanned unofficial transcripts and diplomas and had converted them to .pdf.

I had previously chained them and so merely had to retrieve them.

I also have a "running resume" in .odt which I updated and exported to .pdf.

I updated my "cover letter"( again in .odt) and exported it to .pdf

I put all of the items in a folder and named them in an alpha/numeric manner that would be easily recognizeable as to what I wanted to have on the front of the file.

I then used /menu/office/,pdf chain...........( you may have to install it from synaptic) to chain the college application pages into one .pdf.

I then made up a new folder into which I placed, alphabetically, a) cover letter, b) college's application form c) resume d) scans of unofficial transcripts.

I then right clicked the folder and compressed as .zip.

Using Kontact, through my g-mail account, I made up an e-mail to the HR dept, attached the .zip and sent it on it's merry way!

I then printe out ALL THAT PAPER.....put it into a manilla envelope and will mail it by USPS to the HR dept.

All very clean, all very efficient and something that ANY person should be able to do "for free" for the simple reason that it is something that the "individual person" needs to do relatively regularly,

YES the "rich person" or the "business" SHOULD probably pay for the whole adobe suite so that all of the employees can interact with .pdf. that, after all, is how Adobe makes money and they should make money they are a corporation.

But the individual person should be able to do "the basics" for free.............now, yes, if the individual person all of a sudden wants to get all fancified, then they also, should pay for that fancified stuff, because it is not what the average person NEEDS to be able to do to get along in society.

just my thoughts!

Anyway, if anyone has questions just ask...

But, Linux/Kubuntu ....does a great job and I use it exclusively, except for a crossword puzzle making program.

woodsmoke

[blackpaw]

Okular (KDE PDF Viewer) should have been able to edit PDF forms, I've used it for that in the past.

Glad the GIMP worked for you though.

[Frank616]

Woodsmoke:

they have ONLY a downloadable .pdf to fill out by hand

Not sure what you mean here. I get editable PDF forms all the time. They are generated by the company I deal with, who have the full Adobe suite. However, the forms they generate are created to be editable (fields can be filled in, and the result saved to disk), and I can edit this just fine in Adobe Reader on my Kubuntu 12.04 machines. I don't require the full suite if the source file/form is created as an editable PDF.

Now, if you wanted to created editable PDF's, you would probably need the full Adobe Suite as well, which, last time I checked, is not available for Linux.

Frank.

[woodsmoke]

Hi guys
no okular did not allow of editing.
and no the .pdf in and of itself was not able to be edited, and yes I have receive editable .pdfs in the past but this was not...

and considering that it was from human resources in a STATE LEVEL college in the U.S. that would be, in and of itself, problematic.

But, good suggestions though!

woody

[Frank616]

Woodsmoke:

and considering that it was from human resources in a STATE LEVEL college in the U.S. that would be, in and of itself, problematic.

And there lies the problem.

These are also the kind of people that format Word documents with spaces.

Frank.

[SteveRiley]

These are also the kind of people that format Word documents with spaces.

For many people, the only "press" they had access to was a (monospacing) typewriter. The space is a predictable width and it's entirely reasonable to use them for formatting. Typewriters offer few choices for selecting an arbitrary position to place the next character. The average person even today is hard-pressed to see the difference between monospaced type and proportional type, let alone the difference between, say, Arial and Helvetica.

Still, what you said was funny!

[Feathers McGraw]

Long live LaTeX!

[Frank616]

Steve:

Typewriters offer few choices for selecting an arbitrary position to place the next character.

I'm from that generation.

It annoys the @#$% off me, however, when, in sharing a carefully formated document with a colleague, I got it back again, basically 'trashed' with hard formatting of bold headings, and spaces. Most people just don't get styles, how powerful they are, and how easy they are to use.

This is the same approach that kids today take on their phones, and which spills over into other forms of computing. Just keep pressing things until you get what you want, and to blazes with actually learning how it should be done.

But then, I'm getting old and cranky.

Frank.

[perspectoff]

Steve:

This is the same approach that kids today take on their phones, and which spills over into other forms of computing. Just keep pressing things until you get what you want, and to blazes with actually learning how it should be done.

But then, I'm getting old and cranky.

It's similar to how people have lost the ability to read and write using rules of English anymore. Note how often people use commas incorrectly, or mix up adverbs with adjectives (or fail to use adverbs altogether), or start sentences with conjunctions.

[SteveRiley]

start sentences with conjunctions.

But this is OK now, right? LOL

[Feathers McGraw]

It's similar to how people have lost the ability to read and write using rules of English anymore.

This is so true, many people now speak (and write) a heretical dialect known as "American English"... *ducks*

[woodsmoke]

Well, hmnmmm

contrary to the overheated desires of the French, the dominant language in the world is now "english"...now yes it may be "Spanglish" but this from Wikipedia:

Because English is so widely spoken, it has often been referred to as a "world language", the lingua franca of the modern era,[20] and while it is not an official language in most countries, it is currently the language most often taught as a foreign language.[citation needed] It is, by international treaty, the official language for aeronautical[68] and maritime[69] communications.

And as an homage to the French..( and Germans) ...lingua franca...from the Frankish Language. lol ....

A simple test of why it is going to be the dominant world language is to pull out the "instruction sheet" from the next high end piece of electronic equipment which one purchases and find the "same paragraph" in all of the provided languages, usually at least 5, including French, and ..........

And the instructions are made in...........JAPAN!!!

count the number of words.

In almost all cases, English gets the idea of not a sentence but a paragraph over with fewer words.

There is a listing of the various countries which use "English/WHANGlish" and also coutries which do not.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language

And, I would pose a "logic question".

We are always ranted at by people who are much smarter than us that if we do not speak another language then we are just DOLTS.

The main reason being, that one can enjoy the "nuances" of a culture which one might visit on an "If it is Tuesday then this must be Belgium" whirlwind tour.

Ummmmm so you take Spanish...........and Go to France........or you take French and go to.........Venezuela.

Instead of taking coursework, It would seem to be much more efficient for one to spend the money on a real-time translating device and learn it the way a baby does...

by using it in the country.

just a thought, of little worth.

woodsmoke