A commercial invoice
An invoice whose lines and totals fall where the text puts them, and whose square code lets a telephone pay the exact sum into the exact account with nothing retyped.
A tender pack of three lots
Three firms answer a call for tenders, and what arrives is three sets of figures that have to stay apart and travel together. Each lot goes into this document as a file of its own, whole, in the shape it was sent in. What turns that from a bag of attachments into a pack somebody can work through is the rest: the document names the columns the files are shown under — the lot, the day it was sent, what it comes to — says what each file puts in each of them, and says the list is sorted on the day, newest first.
Without that, reading software has nothing to show but a list of file names, which tells a buyer neither which lot came in when nor for how much. With it, the three lots come up as a table that sorts. And because not every reading software shows a pack at all, the cover sheet lays the same columns out on the page itself: whoever opens the document sees what is inside it either way, and the files are still there to be taken out one by one.
What this example shows
- Three lots, each travelling whole as a file of its own.
- The document names the columns and says what each file puts in them, so the pack is a table rather than a bag.
- The cover sheet lays the same columns out, for reading software that shows no pack.
The source code, complete
Nothing is left out and nothing is simplified: this is the program exactly as it runs, for whoever writes your software. The third is the description itself: a plain list of what the page has to say, which is what the service is sent.
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The document itself
Examples near this one
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 employee and employer shares, the month against the year to date.
A two-page services contract
A services agreement over two pages where no clause is ever cut in half by a page turn, ending in signature, name and date fields filled in on screen.
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 square code, the one line the gates at an airport read — one character out of place and it is refused.