7. 5 DESIGNING THE FORMATS ON PAPER 7.5 DESIGNING THE FORMATS ON PAPER Another major area of adaptation of the formats lies in translating them into formats on paper, especially for use in data gathering. The way the formats look on paper could be very different compared to entry forms in a computerised database. On the computer, one can easily have entries with a variable length for free text fields such as Event Description or Comments. The designer of a paper form must anticipate the amount of space needed, and might for instance like to group the free text fields together as separate pages of the form with the option of continuing on the reverse of the page. It is possible to customise a paper form also in other ways, for example by selecting only the most pertinent fields to be included in the format, 9 or by adding fields from other formats. The following pages illustrate a possible layout, and a sample completion, of the Event Format as a paper form with some fields added from the Act Format, which make it possible to record more details. It must however be borne in mind that the data regarding the various acts, though contained in the Event Format, still constitute distinct records. In a computer database, these have to be entered in a separate format, the Act Format. F or example, only the fields for factual and descriptive data, but not the fields for analytical data. For more information about this distinction, see section 4.2 Fields. 9 80