A Statement with a Part Hidden Before It Is Released

A statement goes to the other side whole, and what identifies the witness does not go with it: the name, the address, the account. The three boxes on this page are measured on the very lines they cover — the width of the words, the height they reach above and below the line — rather than laid over the area somebody thought was about right. Each one also says what is to stand in the gap it leaves: the first shows the reason in the middle of it, the second repeats that reason along a gap too wide for one word to read across, and the third covers without a word.

Here is the thing to know before any of that matters, and this page is laid out to make it impossible to miss. A mark takes nothing out. It states what must go, what stands in its place and what colour fills the gap, and every one of those describes the page as it will be once reading software has applied the marks and written the document out again. Until that happens the name and the account are still in the file under their boxes, and a search finds them. The upper half of the page is the statement as it goes out, marks and words both; the lower half is what the marks ask for, drawn here by the example itself so that it can be seen, and it is not what the file says.

What This Example Shows

  • Each box is measured on the line it covers, never guessed at.
  • A gap can show the reason in its middle, repeat it along its width, or show nothing at all.
  • The words stay in the file until reading software applies the marks and writes the document out again.

The Source Code, Complete

Nothing is left out and nothing is simplified: this is the program exactly as it runs, for the developer who uses this library. The third is the description itself: a plain list of what the page has to say, which is what the service is sent.

Read the Rust source Read the Python source Read the JSON source

The Document Itself

Open the document in English Open the document in French Open the document in German Open the document in Spanish Open the document in Italian Open the document in Portuguese

A Statement with a Part Hidden Before It Is Released, first page

The Same Document in Other Languages

This document weighs 38.2 kB

Examples Near This One

A Commercial Invoice

An invoice: each billed line follows the one before, the totals sit under the last, and the QR code holds the transfer. The customer points a telephone at it, and the banking app offers the exact sum into the exact account, with nothing retyped.

A Delivery Note

The note that travels with the goods: a barcode against each article, a box the receiver ticks, and the consignment's own code.

A Payslip

A payslip: eighteen contribution lines, with the employee's share and the employer's, and for each the month's amount then the total since January. Each figure is tied to the line and the column it stands under, for software that reads the page aloud.

A Landscape Certificate

A certificate whose border, ribbon and seal are drawn as lines rather than photographed: sharp at any size, and a fraction of the weight.

A Boarding Pass

A boarding pass carrying, as a QR code, the one line the gates at an airport read — one character out of place and it is refused.

Every example, by subject