Helping OpenTaxSolver Project

One thing almost anyone can do to help OTS -- even non-programmers -- would be to assist in populating the "Instructions" files. These are just regular text-files, with snippets from the Gov't Instruction Booklets. No programming knowledge required.

Just copy&paste text from the booklet (from your PDF reader) to an OTS instruction file. Place the text after the bracketed line-name used by the corresponding OTS form, as shown below. (You can adjust a few words in the text, accordingly.)

Then users of OTS GUI will see those line-names highlighted in blue, which they can click-on and see the detailed instructions.

This improves the user-experience, since users will not need to go back and flip through the instruction booklet to see detailed instructions about what to enter on each line.

You can look at the existing Instructions-files, as examples. They are located under the "src/formdata" directory of all recent versions of OTS. These text files will have names ending in "_instructions.dat", such as "f1040_instructions.dat".

	Example:
		[L3b] Ordinary Dividends

		  Each payer should send you a Form 1099-DIV.
		  Enter your total ordinary dividends on this line.
		  This amount should be shown in box 1a of the
		  1099-DIV Form(s) you receive.

Don't worry about the file-suffix (.dat), they are just regular text files. Use a text editor like gedit, emacs, vim, or wordpad, etc..

Please send any that you populate to aston_roberts@yahoo.com, for inclusion in the next or future OTS release.

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