Marks on the page / Stamp and seal area
Leaving space for a physical stamp or seal on a printed document
A reserved clear area where a rubber stamp, an embossed seal or a wet signature will be applied after printing.
Why this block is harder than it looks
This is a negative-space problem, which makes it unlike everything else in the cluster: the requirement is that nothing is there. A stamp is applied by a person with an inked block roughly 40 by 40 millimetres, and it will be placed approximately, so the clear area has to be larger than the stamp and has to be clear of anything that matters. The failure is quiet: the document is generated, printed and stamped, and only then does somebody notice that the stamp has covered the reference number. Nothing in the rendering reports it because from the layout's point of view nothing went wrong.
The decisions that make it work
Reasons rather than a description of the code. Each of these is a choice that has a wrong answer, and the wrong answer is usually the default.
- Reserve a real area with a defined size rather than hoping a gap exists. An empty box with a fixed height is a commitment; white space that happens to be there is not.
- Size it larger than the stamp on every side. 55 by 55 millimetres of clear area for a 40 millimetre stamp is a reasonable allowance for approximate placement.
- Keep nothing important underneath it, including light background tints, because a stamp on a tint is harder to read than a stamp on white.
- Mark it only if the person stamping needs to know where. A faint outline and a small label help, and a heavy box competes with the stamp itself.
- Place it away from the fold if the document is posted, and away from the binding edge if it is bound. A stamp across a crease is unreadable.
- Give the area break-inside: avoid so it cannot be split, and keep it on the page it belongs to rather than letting it float to the end.
The fragment
Markup and the CSS it needs, and nothing else. It expects a document that already has a page rule and a base stylesheet, so paste it into one rather than opening it on its own.
<div class="stamp-area">
<span class="hint">Official stamp</span>
</div>
<style>
.stamp-area {
break-inside: avoid;
width: 55mm;
height: 55mm; /* larger than the stamp, on every side */
margin: 10pt 0 0 auto;
border: 0.5pt dashed #ccc; /* a hint, not a box that competes */
position: relative;
background: #fff; /* nothing underneath, no tint */
}
.stamp-area .hint {
position: absolute;
left: 0; bottom: -10pt;
font-size: 7pt;
letter-spacing: 0.06em;
text-transform: uppercase;
color: #999;
}
</style>What breaks when it is built the obvious way
Assuming the space at the bottom of the page is enough. It is enough on a short document and it disappears on a long one, at which point the stamp lands over the terms, and the person applying it has no way to know that was not intended.
How to prove it survived pagination
Print the page, take the actual stamp, and stamp it approximately rather than carefully. Then read everything else on the page. If any of it is obscured, the area is too small or in the wrong place, and both are cheap to fix before a run of a thousand.
Where it sits in a finished document
This page is one block. The document it belongs to has a page rule, a base stylesheet, a header and everything else around it, and repeating all of that here would make thirty pages that say the same thing. The hot work permit template is a complete file with this block already in it, so take that and change the fragment rather than assembling one from parts. The property doing most of the work here is covered on its own page, with the support caveats that belong there rather than here.
Frequently asked
Will this fragment work on its own?
Not as a whole document. It has no page rule, no margins and no base type, because those belong to the document rather than to the block, and duplicating them in every fragment would mean thirty copies to keep in step. Paste it into a template that already has them.
Why does it look right in a browser and wrong in the PDF?
Because a browser window is one continuous surface and a document is a stack of fixed rectangles. Nothing in a scrolling view exercises a page boundary, so every break rule in the fragment is inert until the content is paginated. Render the real thing with enough content to cross two or three boundaries, then look.
Do I need a special option on the render request for this?
No. Everything on this page is CSS and markup, which is your side of the boundary. What the render has to give you is a real page size with real margins, and after that the layout is decided by the stylesheet.
Other parts of a document
The blocks that sit next to this one, and one from the next group along so you are not sealed inside a single kind of problem.
Bleed and crop marks on a document that will be trimmed
Extra artwork beyond the finished page edge and the short rules that show a trimmer where to cut, needed for anything printed oversize and cut down.
A photo grid with captions that keeps images the same size
A grid of photographs with numbered captions, used in surveys, inspections and incident reports where the images are the evidence.
A printed checkbox list with boxes big enough to tick by hand
A list of items each with a box to be ticked, used on inspection sheets, handover forms and anything filled in on paper.
Showing a total in two currencies without the columns going ragged
A total repeated in a second currency, usually because the document is issued in one currency and has to be settled or reported in another.
Hot work permit, as a complete file
The whole document with this block already in place, ready to copy and change.
break-inside in paged output
The property carrying the weight here, with its real support status.
Every part of a document
The full list, grouped by the kind of problem the block poses.
Paste the fragment into the playground inside a page rule and see what it does at a real page size. That is the only way any of this gets confirmed.