Installing S-89
Recommendations
Theocbase must be closed, first!
⇒ About (new) S-89, dated since 11/23:
- it seems preferable to delete the old S-89 PDF and jpg files before downloading and installing the new ones.
- Use absolutely TB’s release ≥ 2023.01.0
⇒ About S-89 chinese version, dated since 11/23:
- The both S-89 chinese version appear to be defective: the line of dots in the “Part No” section is missing into the PDF file, supplied on JW.org. Need to fix!
- Tip to fix manually: Edit the PDF and add the line by copy/paste; see Printing with S-89 Chinese: error - #11 by chefboy
Process
To be able to print assignment slips (S-89), please follow these instructions:
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Login to jw.org
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Go to Forms
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Select Our Christian Life and Ministry Meeting from the Categories list
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Click Search button
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Browse down and find form "S-89 Our Christian Life and Ministry Meeting Assignment"
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Select your language
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Save the pdf file to some folder you can easily find later.
Usually it will be downloaded to “Downloads” folder. It is usually better to save it after to some other folder where you can store all printing templates you might have in the future. -
Open Theocbase, go to Settings > General page; on the Printing section, click on browse
button and browse to the folder where your PDF file is saved.
NOTICE: You can’t see or select the files in this setting. You just select the FOLDER they are in! -
Go to Settings > Print page. A scan is executed, just the first time you select it; after that you can see in the Printing preview window, if you click on the ( ) Assignments Slips radio button.
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You can then use the converted file for printing, whatever works for your language.
CAVEAT
Sometimes conversion by Theocbase is poor!
Here are some tips on how to convert PDF to JPG files yourself:
Tip for Linux: prefer to use Poppler tools than ImageMagick; it really produces better quality and lighter output than ImageMagick.
Tip for MacOS: Use Preview app to convert PDF to JPG file. More explain on this guide.
ImageMagick
- Website: https://imagemagick.org
- On Linux, search on your distrib repository, like for Debian:
apt install imagemagick - Download link for MacOS: https://imagemagick.org/script/download.php#macosx
- Download link for Windows:
- https://imagemagick.org/script/download.php#windows
- need Ghoscript for Windows (64bit): https://ghostscript.com/releases/gsdnld.html; choose and click on Ghostscript AGPL Release link.
When ImageMagick is downloaded and installed:
- Go to download folder where is your S-89*.pdf
- Open a terminal and use this command, as instance for French S-89:
- For Linux:
convert -density 600 -quality 70 S-89_F.pdf S-89_F.jpg - For MacOS:
- For Windows:
magick.exe -density 600 S-89_F.pdf -quality 70 S-89_F.jpg
This will produce an JPG file with high density, and minimal quality needed.
- For Linux:
- Copy your produced JPG file on your Theocbase folder
Poppler
Poppler utils are tools to manipulate easy PDF files.
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Website: https://poppler.freedesktop.org/
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Officially available only for Linux!
After installing poppler tools, segun your distrib repository, use the pdftoppm binary as instance for French PDF:
pdftoppm -jpeg -jpegopt quality=70 -r 300 S-89_F.pdf S-89_F-q70
Online tools
It exists some website which offers online conversion.
We don’t recommend this kind of site for privacy reasons; as a reminder, our organization JW.org asks us not to distribute its files on any other website.
If you use such sites, that’s up to you; but be aware that some may be dishonest in their approach and inject malicious code. This is not necessarily the case.
The most respectful approach to our organization’s recommendations is to dispense with them.
Helpers: Please don’t do it…