LaTeX.org

got it! thanks for the help frabjous. i ended up putting something like the following into the header def in the documentclass definition.

\put(a,b){\line(x,y){len}}

background--
i'm trying to create a document class to reproduce a hideous word template. it has a large header with 10 or so fields of data with lines like a table, a large footer, and a frame around the whole page.

approach--
i started with article.cls, added quite a few user variables, and ...