Create Hand-Filled Form

Question

I'm creating a form for people to print and fill out. Currently, I'm using

\usepackage[normalem]{ulem}
\begin{document}
    I, \uline{\hskip 3cm}, instated \uline{\hfill}
\end{document}

The only problem is that in a paragraph, there isn't enough vertical space to fill out the form. \spacing{1.3} is pretty good, but if there are no form elements, I don't want the extra space.

The following is close:

\usepackage[normalem]{ulem}
\begin{document}
    I, \raisebox{0pt}[2em]{\uline{\hskip 3cm}}, instated \raisebox{0pt}[2em]{\uline{\hfill}}
\end{document}

But the second line doesn't take any horizontal space (the \hrule seems to be ignored).

Is there a good way to fix my approach here, or should I use a different approach altogether?

Answer 1

You don't need ulem at all to draw some lines, instead you can use some low-level TeX and use \leaders, which has the syntax:

\leaders<box><skip>

It inputs <box> as many times as necessary to fill out <skip>. In addition we put a \rule of zero thickness in front of the line. The height of that \rule will determine the space reserved for the hand writing. In the following I assume that a human can write into a 6mm high space without issues.

The macro \formline I created will take an optional argument specifying the width of the horizontal skip (and hence the line), if you don't provide any it'll use \hfill, else it'll use \hskip#1\relax.

I put some dummy content around your form lines to show that the vertical spacing gets stretched on the text lines containing the form lines:

\documentclass[]{article}

\newcommand\formline[1][\fill]
  {%
    \rule{0pt}{6mm}%
    \leaders\hbox{\rule[-1pt]{1pt}{.4pt}}\hskip #1\relax
    \null
  }

\usepackage{duckuments}

\begin{document}
\blindduck[1-]
I, \formline[3cm], instated \formline\\
\blindduck
I, \formline[3cm], instated \formline
\end{document}