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Comment by simonh | Hacker News Reader

A significant use of our printer is to print documents to sign, so we can scan the signed copy and email it to a solicitor or bank. Crazy.

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I worked somewhere where documents were printed, then signed by one of these https://axidraw.com/ using the client's signature (with their permission) to be posted to a pension provider who required wet signatures.

Comic Sans in their website title. That's a bold move.

Very interesting machine, thanks! I wonder if it does an analysis on input to determine where the start/end marks on a stroke with a fountain pen are.

the drawing software is actually pretty simple and draws "plots", with each stroke being a single plot and the pen lifting after.

What that means is you cannot scan a signature and reproduce it, because the machine won't know where to start and where to lift the pen. We used something like documented here: https://wiki.evilmadscientist.com/Capturing_Handwriting#Capt...

This produces SVGs which have those individual strokes that the machine can reproduce.

jSignature looks interesting. I wrote something like that for capturing signatures on Android years ago, where you work out each plot until the user lifts their finger.

I wonder if you could recreate signatures by examining the depth of the ink where the person lifts their pen, since that typically has the largest deposit of ink at that point, particularly with a fountain pen.

I can't stop watching that video. If I had one of those machines, I'd never get anymore work done.

I once used it to plot the entire globe and didn't get much else done that day!

> If I had one of those machines, I'd never get anymore work done.

Hint: The entry level is at USD475. ;-)

That’s actually surprisingly cheap. If I had more space I might be tempted to get one.

You can get a laser engraver or 3d printer for half the cost of those devices that's much more versatile.

These are based on the EBB board which uses a custom command set rather than the more common GCode command set which is the basis for most CNC machines.

If you're interested in CNC I'd recommend going with something that is based on GCode as it's much more transferable. GCode is used in everything from $100 PCB engravers up to multi-million dollar HAAS milling machines.

I appreciate the advice, but I doubt the laser engraver or 3D printer are going to hold a pen, so it wouldn’t really do what I wanted (of course they’re great to have in their own right).

There are countless examples on the internet of people adding laser engraver modules and pens to their 3d Printers. They're designed to be modified, they use an open source control language utilized by industry, unlike that pen device using a proprietary language.

The $150 laser engravers from Eleksmaker for example have an unused servo pinout on their control boards specifically for adding an accessory like an actuator for a pen. It would be trivially simple to swap out the laser module, which is held in by thumb screws, and replace it with a pen.

I once wrote my signature on a piece of white paper and scanned it in. Then used paint.net to delete the white parts and save it as a transparent PNG.

Now I just paste that over the appropriate place on electronic documents and email it back.

PSA: For those on macOS, the Preview app has taken this exact concept and built it in for a while now, and I use it all the time. Clicking and dragging on my signature has saved me countless times.

Somehow I am always surprised when I use a new PDF tool and discover that it, like all the others, has failed to use transparency to make signatures look right. No real signature fails to cross something already on a document, but every time we get this stupid blank box around the signature...

I find this rather amusing, because the much maligned Adobe Reader handles this just fine.

I've been using a little app called Xournal on linux for years which does that just fine.

I have a 600dpi png file with black foreground and transparent background.

Xournal drops it anywhere right over the existing pdf image, resized and positioned at will, and the transparent parts are transparent.

Clearly I've been using the wrong tools... fortunately this isn't an extremely common task for me.

I did the same years ago. I've done everything from new job paperwork to buying a house to various government forms and I've yet to have anyone refuse to accept or even comment on the fact that my signature is a pixel-perfect copy on all documents.

I did that once while sitting in my car all right on my phone.

I was about to go in to something I couldn't blow off, and I couldn't blow off returning the mail as soon as possible either.

But I had a Note 4 phone and a working cell connection and managed to get it all done in a few minutes right there in my drivers seat.

I think I didn't even end up using the Note4's stylus but writing the signature on paper and taking a pic.

It was a while ago so I don't remeber exactly what I did or what apps I used. I probably tried a few different things on the spot before I found something that worked. Maybe the official adobe android app had signature support like the desktop app does now, or maybe I had to do it more manually with some other combination of apps, but I know that I went from receiving an email with a pdf attachment to returning that email with my own new pdf attachment all in about 15 minutes with nothing but my phone.

I've found that even European bureaucracy is ok with me using MacOS "add signature" or similar feature.

A clerk told me they tell you to print/sign/scan because most people is not familiar or has that feature.

If it doesn't work, here's an app idea: an app to make a document look like it was printed and then scanned.

There has been a few such posts on HN in the past. eg:

FalsiScan – Make it look like a PDF has been hand signed and scanned

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22811653

Ah nice! Following a gist link in the thread you linked I also saw that someone made this website: https://www.scanyourpdf.com

Maybe we could eventually use gpg keys to sign documents online. Within the next 50 years or so maybe when governments have caught up.

Not only governments but products that bring this to the masses. Encryption is complex and complicated, I understand why but while it is not simplified for UX, not in implementation, it will be, unfortunately, quite hard to become ubiquitous.

There is legislation in place in the EU to enable digital signing. I think it is currently only on the level of: 'signatures that meet these standards can be legally binding if the contract allows for digital signatures'. I also do believe there is a system to allow countries to do identity attestation. That is, countries will assert that, indeed, this key belongs to this name.

> I also do believe there is a system to allow countries to do identity attestation

not sure about the rest of the EU, in Poland there's a thing called Trusted Profile ("Profil Zaufany") where your bank serves as an "identity provider", i.e. you basically use your online bank account to verify your identity. it's kinda weird! but after that you can use your TP to sign and submit most (?) government forms/docs so it's pretty nice

I've successfully bought a home by self-GPG-signing and emailing documents (even in a country that has an official (albeit horrible) 'digital signature' solution).

MacOS has a "signature" option in Preview for that kind of work.

To add to that, At least on fedora Linux and likely everywhere else Xournal can open PDF files and you can type free form text or even scribble from within the app.

I use a pen because my Lenovo Flex 14 came with one but I imagine you could use a mouse pointer as well.

Replace "sign, scan and email it" with "hanko and fax it" and you are describing most of Japan.

In our company we copy-paste pngs containing signatures into documents. Crazy, too. We also use cryptographic signatures for engineering processes, but most recipients prefer the bitmaps resulting from the png...

A Galaxy Note device will permanently solve this use case. I love paper, and use it (and fountain pens), but my Galaxy Note with S-Pen made the process of signing and sending legal documents far more pain-free. Open PDF, sign, re-save, send back. Done.

If only they would accept a detached PGP signature based on the contents of the document ...

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