[ericHosick]

A long time ago I was building a data entry system is Visual Basic for forms that, once entered, need to both store the input in a database and print out the form. There were hundreds and hundreds of different forms.

So, instead of making an interface for data entry and then a system to print the forms, the data entry UI for each form looked exactly the same as the forms themselves. Scrolling was needed because at the time there were only low resolution CRT screens.

However, for printing, I would draw the filled out form at a very high resolution in video memory "off screen" and print that.

So, the work to create one form resulted in supporting both data entry and printing.

It turned out that since the people doing the data entry also knew the forms really well, they were able to enter the data 2.5 times faster than initial estimates.