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Don't watermark your legal PDFs with purple dragons in suits

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Re: Don't watermark your legal PDFs with purple dragons in suits

#131
post #115
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Caterina Fake, co-founder of Flickr, famously had issues with IT systems: Tim: There’re so many places we could start, but in the process of doing homework for this, I found mentioned, and I wanted to do a fact check on this, of you having plane tickets automatically cancelled, and other issues related to your last name. Is that accurate? Did those things actually happen? Caterina Fake: This has happened to me many t…

This seems like a good spot for the link to @patio11's "Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names" So, as a public service, I’m going to list assumptions your systems probably make about names. All of these assumptions are wrong. Try to make less of them next time you write a system which touches names. https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-...

See, the issue is a lot of people have stupid names.

Re: Don't watermark your legal PDFs with purple dragons in suits

#134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For example, I like to put Batman as a dummy user I can't remember the details, but I've heard a story multiple times about a fake-sounding name being used in testing -- I think US military payroll? -- and causing problems when a real person had that name. Can anyone here remember this? In any case, "batman" is just about plausible enough that it could be real. I tend to use names like "Mr. Testy Testalicious" which…

I used to use Test T. Testerton until coworkers critiqued that "Test T" reminded them of male genitals.

One of the audio checks I've heard over the many conventions I've volunteered for is "Ice Ice Icicles, Cue Cue Cuticles, Test... Test... Testicles" with the final word pronounced like Hercules.

Re: Don't watermark your legal PDFs with purple dragons in suits

#135
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh, optics have been important since the dawn of man, and probably even before. Ziggurats are all about optics, and so are mating displays. A cynic might say "more important", but that's hard to ascertain.

people say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but first impressions are everything

"Don't let a shallow first impression affect your deeper judgement, but expect others to let it affect theirs."

Re: Don't watermark your legal PDFs with purple dragons in suits

#136
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Caterina Fake, co-founder of Flickr, famously had issues with IT systems: Tim: There’re so many places we could start, but in the process of doing homework for this, I found mentioned, and I wanted to do a fact check on this, of you having plane tickets automatically cancelled, and other issues related to your last name. Is that accurate? Did those things actually happen? Caterina Fake: This has happened to me many t…

People named Null are also having struggles in the modern world: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20160325-the-names-that-b...

lol so much data gets converted into strings at some point when passed around. Definitely encountered systems where you have to check for both null and "null"

Re: Don't watermark your legal PDFs with purple dragons in suits

#137

That's not a "watermark", keep it to 5% opacity. This is around 13% and very distracting.

There's a color, gray95, that is the recommended black and white color for watermarks in a few books I've read on the topic. Honestly the best way to do it right is to ask the court (politely) what their stated requirements for watermarking are and if you get shrugs, you go for the bare minimum.

Re: Don't watermark your legal PDFs with purple dragons in suits

#138

Also, sometimes we (developers) like to use wacky data for testing purposes. For example, I like to put Batman as a dummy user, and my QA likes to upload cat pictures when testing uploads/images. We do it so it's obvious it's test data, and also we're lazy to think of more "real" data. Just say some users expect real(ish) data for testing. I had a client who was totally not happy when he saw Batman and Superman in th…

I'm a big fan of using Emoji for names of test/dummy users. It helps test your application and dev stack's end-to-end Unicode compliance. It is less likely to conflict with real data (so far as I'm aware we haven't yet seen children born named with emoji, though that is likely a matter of time). It is often very visibly test data that stands out. But also and maybe more important, you can have fun with it.

Re: Don't watermark your legal PDFs with purple dragons in suits

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To a normal person, sure. But the legal system ruins lives and deals in ruined lives every day. They don't blink twice at that stuff. A cartoon dragon on the other hand...

The formality of the process helps them keep their conscious clear. Attacking the formality of the process therefore threatens them.

The watermark is actively distracting from the enormously important work of reading the complaint in detail. This isn't a question of formality for formality's sake, it's a question of ensuring that the processes run smoothly so that justice can be done.

Re: Don't watermark your legal PDFs with purple dragons in suits

#140
post #128

Wow! I thought the judge was overreacting. But that's one extremely annoying watermark. I would demand the same, no matter what I do for a living.

It might be appropriate if you're a children's cartoonist/artist and you're sending out proofs? But yeah, I get your point and agree.
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