printpack is a command-line utility for printing TBESC participant packets in order and grouped in a way to take advantage of auto-stapling printers. You should be able to point printpack to a PDF of combined participant forms (that is, the ones generated by DMS) and print packets that complete except for the TSPOT requisition and any labels you need.
Unfortunately, wrangling PDFs is pretty hard to do and requires that you have all of these programs installed on your computer and on your system path:
- Python 2.7 (www.python.org)
- pdftk (www.pdflabs.com/tools/pdftk-the-pdf-toolkit/)
- Ghostscript (www.ghostscript.com)
- gsprint (pages.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/gsview/gsprint.htm)
It's quite possibly that your institution won't let you install some of these programs or won't let you modify your system path. I can't provide that kind of support to everyone, so please check with your local IT support if you have questions or problems with this stuff.
When you run printpack (at the command line, type 'python printpack.py'), it will:
- Create a 'printed' directory in your current working directory, if one doesn't already exist - this is where it stashes PDFs that have been printed
- Ask you where to find the pre-enrollment form PDF, the adult consent form PDF, and the parental permission form PDF (just once - it'll remember thereafter)
- Ask you where the DMS-generated PDF of forms is
- Ask you whether the forms are adult or pediatric
- Ask you how many forms are in the packet
Once you've given it this information, printpack will break down and reassemble the DMS PDF into the correct order (or at least, the order we prefer in Denver), then start printing the forms. This can take a LONG TIME, so I'd suggest loading your printer with paper and firing it off over lunch.
If you run printpack in its own directory, it will remember where your pre-enrollment, consent, and permission forms are, so you'll only have to hunt for them once, as well as putting together an archive of PDF forms that have been printed out previously.