FormAssist™ is an AnyCPU application that can run as 32-bit or 64-bit depending on the operating system. It demonstrates the forms processing capabilities of Accusoft's FormSuite SDK.

The FormAssist application's C# source code is provided in the FormSuite .NET SDK installation. This code is provided to demonstrate a sample workflow implementation using the Accusoft components. Using the sample will speed the integration of FormSuite technologies into your products with design documentation and a modular source base.

Main Functions

• Demonstrates Accusoft's forms processing technology
  • Form identification
  • Form dropout
  • Zonal ICR
  • Zonal OCR
  • OMR
  • Image display/editing
  • Image cleanup

• Quickly set up forms and processing instructions
  • Create, save, and manage form sets
  • Add form templates to form sets
  • Set up and add fields to form templates
  • Configure properties for image cleanup, ICR, OCR, OMR, barcode recognition, and processing
  • Process filled images to optimize settings for ICR, OCR, OMR, barcode recognition, and form identification

• Utilize the source code (provided with the FormSuite Toolkit) as a foundation for developing the formset creation portion of your forms processing application. Another demonstration program, the Forms Processing Server, is also available as a foundation for developing the batch-oriented forms processing aspect of your application.
  • Illustrates best practice for integration of Accusoft components and example workflow
  • Modular source code facilitates rapid development of form setup and forms processing solutions
  • Included in the FormSuite .NET installation as C# source code
    

Accusoft Components Used in the FormAssist Application

• FormFix® is a forms identification, alignment/registration and OMR (Optical Mark Recognition) component. Its primary purpose is to identify, register or align, and drop out forms, as well as perform OMR, also known as MarkSense.
• FormDirector™ is dedicated to integrating the FormAssist components into a robust forms-processing product. It handles all read and write operations of form definition files and form set files.
• SmartZone™ ICR performs ICR recognition in user defined areas of interest, or zones. SmartZone ICR can be easily integrated with other Accusoft components into a robust forms-processing product.
• SmartZone™ OCR performs OCR recognition in user defined areas of interest, or zones. SmartZone OCR can be easily integrated with other Accusoft components into a robust forms-processing product.
• ScanFix® Xpress is a powerful document image enhancement technology that enhances bitonal, color, and gray images. ScanFix Xpress can create smaller file sizes and cleaner images, ultimately resulting in higher ICR and OCR rates. Clean up images using deskew, noise removal, character smoothing, dot shading removal, hole punch removal, line removal, text repair, auto inverse text correction, auto negate, auto binarization, auto border crop, blank page detection and rotate.
• ImagXpress® is ideal for powerful document imaging and forms processing application development. ImagXpress delivers single and multi-page TIFF support, embedded-image PDF support, TIFF tag handling, EXIF tag handling, file conversion, and support for 1 to 24-bit images.
• NotateXpress™ adds powerful annotation functionality. NotateXpress enables annotation capability both programmatically and through application end-user interaction.
• Barcode Xpress™ (optional) is a powerful control which reads most commonly used 1D barcodes, detecting them anywhere on the page, in any orientation. It accurately reads common industry 1D and 2D barcodes, writes most 1D barcodes and some 2D barcodes.
• PDF Xpress™ (optional) enables you to build applications supporting PDF file creation editing, and viewing, using licensed Adobe® technology. It is used to create PDF documents, modify and reorganize existing PDF documents, access metadata, view and create PDF/A documents, and more. Use PDF files as filled form images or template images.

New Functions in FormAssist 4

Forms processing technology included in this version:

• Processing speed improvements after adding to or modifying a formset.
• FormAssist UI code has been restructured for easier development.
• FormAssist processing code has been refactored to use the Accusoft Forms API.
• FormFix 5 has been integrated to provide easier to use and more accurate OMR behavior. In the OMR properties dialog, RecognitionEngine can be set to permit switching between OMR mechanisms. OMR Results have been fortified with additional details to simplify exception handling.
• For new FormSets, autobinarize will be the default for processing filled images.
• Ability to use multi-page TIFF files and single or multi-page PDF files as filled images in FormAssist. (Using PDFs requires purchase of PDF Xpress.)
• Ability to use first page from TIFF files or PDF files as a form template image in FormAssist. (Using PDFs requires purchase of PDF Xpress.)
• When used with Barcode Xpress, FormAssist supports the creation and processing of barcode fields. (Using barcodes requires purchase of Barcode Xpress.)
• Enhancements made to the File menu provides a list of Most Recently Used files:
  • The 10 most recently used FileSet paths are listed.
  • The most recent FileSet is shown in the FormAssist startup dialog.
  • Open Sample Form Set #1 and #2 added for convenient access to samples.
• ScanFix changes:
  • Border removal is no longer available at the field level.
  • ScanFix SmoothZoom is now available at the field level. SmoothZoom allows you to increase the scale of bitonal images. This is particularly useful for OCR recognition of low resolution images or small text.
• SmartZone default changes:
  • ICR and OCR fields have a default Minimum Confidence of 15.
• Supports reading all prior FormAssist version Form Set files. Writes FormAssist 4 files that support all new component settings.
• Visual Studio solution files contain build configurations which support including or excluding optional components Barcode Xpress and PDF Xpress.
  • Visual Studio 2005 solution files have been removed.
  • Visual Studio 2010 solution files have been added.

For information on how to register and license all your Accusoft components, see Licensing.