What one sheet of paper can and cannot do

What a paper keepsake is

The award your team hands out, the sheet from a weekend course, the vows read aloud and then framed, the page recording the day a dog came home. None of these were issued by an institution. They were given by one person to another, and they still last for years. What makes them last is not effect. It is that the day is written down.

People have sold into this space for a long time: land on the moon, Scottish titles, names for stars. They look alike from outside but they say different things. One writes that it holds a recognised legal basis. Another writes on its own front page that a title cannot be bought and the thing is for enjoyment.

The second one lasts. Enjoyment does not come from effect; it comes from the object and the day. The moment a seller claims an effect that does not exist, the claim stops adding joy and starts putting the seller at risk.

Where the line sits

Nobody can sell land on the moon. Article II of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty says the moon and other celestial bodies are not subject to national appropriation by any means, and Article VI puts the responsibility for private space activity on the state. There is no basis anywhere for an individual to sell ownership of lunar ground. Writing ownership on a page and selling it is claiming a right that does not exist.

In Korea that claim runs into Article 3(1) of the Act on Fair Labeling and Advertising, which bars false and deceptive labeling. The test is whether consumers may be misled, so a buyer treating it as fun does not excuse the seller's sentence.

Words that mean a qualification need the same care. Article 17(2) of the Framework Act on Qualifications requires anyone establishing and running a private qualification to record it with the authorities. So no word meaning a qualification appears on the sheets this tool draws, and a check counts those words in both the screen text and the output.

Seals too. Articles 225 and 238 of the Criminal Act punish forging public documents and forging or misusing the seal of a public office. A round stamp or an emblem that resembles one can create that misunderstanding by itself, so this tool has no code that draws a circle.

The opposite is just as clear. Writing a name, a date and a feeling on a page you give to someone, printing it, framing it, sending it to a friend: none of that meets any threshold. The threshold appears when the page says it proves something.

What this tool does

This is what the code actually does. One sheet comes from one list of pieces: heading, recipient, body, giver, date, and at the end the imprint and the origin line. Both the drawing code and the QR read that single list. Keeping two lists would let them drift apart, and once they drift the QR starts saying something the sheet does not.

The imprint is appended to that list unconditionally. There is no parameter that reaches it, so no setting and no address can remove it. Address parameters outside a small allowed list are discarded entirely, so inventing a name that sounds like it turns the imprint off does nothing at all. And the function that builds the QR stops outright if it is handed a list with no imprint in it.

The QR carries the text of the sheet as it stands. No lookup address, no serial number. Anyone can read it with any QR app and get the same sentences, imprint included. Not needing to ask the issuer is the whole point of doing it this way.

The app then reads its own QR back. It lifts the pixels it just drew, decodes them and compares with the original. If they match it says so; if the code does not read it says that instead. It never claims a readable code it did not verify.

Every typeface is openly licensed and the browser fetches it from Google Fonts directly, so no font file sits on our server. The PDF embeds no font either: it lays the drawn picture onto one A4 page. That is why text in the PDF cannot be selected.

The server counts only how far a visit got: opened, picked a kind, read back, downloaded, copied a link, together with the date, the language and a rough source label. Neither the name nor the body nor even which kind was chosen goes into that line.

Writing a good one

Short bodies work best. Two or three lines sit large on the page; past five the type shrinks until it cannot be read from across a room. If several things want saying, keeping the one that belongs to that day usually outlives the rest.

Concrete beats general. You turned the lights on first every morning reads better than you worked diligently. The recipient has to recognise the sentence as their own for the sheet to end up in a frame.

Keep the name short and put the title in the body. The name sits large under the heading, so adding a job title pushes it onto a second line.

Each kind starts with a typeface and you can change it. A serif suits formality; handwriting suits a child or an animal. Handwriting is hard to read at length, so pair it with a short body.

Notes per kind

For an award, the reason is everything. What you saw matters more than what the award is called. Inside a company or a club, the giver line can simply be the team or the group.

An appointment sheet comes alive with a term. The smaller the duty the better, and one line saying how long it runs turns the page into a story.

For thanks, the date carries it. Naming when it happened lets the reader see the scene again. One specific day beats general gratitude.

Vows have nothing to do with the legal filing; a marriage takes effect through that filing. What goes here is what the two of you said, so it reads best in the exact words used on the day.

Smoke-free days needs only the day you stopped; the page counts to today and sets the number large. Coming back on the hundredth day or the first year gives a different number.

The moon sheet is about the night, not ownership. There is deliberately no field for coordinates or a plot number. The name of whoever looked up with you and what was said is the content of this page.

Where people get stuck

If the page says the text is long, it no longer fits one QR. The QR carries the whole sheet, so the body length is the QR capacity. Shorten it and the sheet redraws.

Text in the downloaded PDF cannot be copied because one picture was laid onto the page. That follows from not embedding font files, and printing gives exactly what the screen showed.

If the preview looks different for a moment, the typeface is still arriving. It redraws shortly, and you can wait for it before saving.

Requests to remove the imprint are not taken. No place to remove it was built, and that is the only way this tool can stay honest with the people who receive these sheets.

To reopen a sheet later, use the copy-link button; what you typed travels in the address. Nothing is stored on our side, so losing the link means losing the way back to that sheet.