Accusoft.FormDirector3.Net - Updated August 4, 2020
Control Parameters, Template Images, and Custom Data
FormDirector3 for .Net - User Guide > Concepts > Supported Data Types > Control Parameters, Template Images, and Custom Data

Overview

FormDirector provides various specific holding areas for descriptive parameters and attributes of form sets, forms, and fields. FormDirector exposes two data types to support storage of template images: operation control parameters and custom data. With the help of these two data types, almost any type of data can be managed by FormDirector.

Template Images

The concept of a template image (or just template) in the forms processing world, is described as a full image of the original form, without any additional data added to it. FormDirector implements the concept of a template image as the type TemplateImage.

The TemplateImage type is made available to enable the storage of 1-bpp (bit per pixel) images of a blank form. Each TemplateImage is intended to be associated with only one FormDefinition, and a FormDefinition instance normally will only have one Template image associate with it. However, there is support for associating more than one TemplateImage with a single FormDefinition. When a FormDefinition is written to persistent storage, the associated TemplateImages are also written to persistent storage. And, when a FormDefinition is read from persistent storage, the associated TemplateImages are also read from persistent storage. The actual image data stored within a TemplateImage object and in persistent memory are compressed.

Learn more about the TemplateImage Class.

Control Parameters and Custom Data

Control parameters can define and describe operations that are to be performed at various places in a forms processing application. Custom data is any data, which may not be related to operations that needs to be associated with a particular Field, FormDefinition, or FormSet. To represent control parameters and custom data, FormDirector implements the type DataItem.

The DataItem class has an attribute named Type that describes the type or purpose of the data stored within the object. The class also has an attribute named Content to store the control parameters or custom data.

Each of the types Field, FormDefinition, and FormSet have multiple attributes that are represented by the DataItem class. Some of these attributes have specific purposes:

In addition to these two special-purpose attributes, FormSet, FormDefinition, and Field objects each have two general-purpose attributes, to hold ordered collections of DataItem objects:

Operations

Operation Description
FormSet Operations FormSet Operations typically include instructions for ScanFix operations such as deskew, that you will perform before form identification. While FormSet Operations are normally clean-up or enhancement operations, you could store other things here, such as scanner parameters.
FormDefinition Operations FormDefinition Operations typically include instructions for some ScanFix image enhancement tasks, but the list of FormDefinition Operations might also be empty depending on your imaging needs. Operation instructions are typically performed after form identification, but before  processing fields.
Field Operations Field Operations will almost always end with instructions for a data capture operations, such as Auto Classification, OCR, ICR, or OMR. Often, Field operations begin with instructions for ScanFix image enhancement parameters. If you want, this would be a convenient place to store some types of data validation operations. If you are using a third-party component to perform some of your field processing, you could store those parameters in this area.

OtherDataItems

OtherDataItem Description
OtherDataItem Collection

The OtherDataItems collection is intended to store custom attributes of your form sets, forms and fields.

For example, you could use these collections to store database ID's. FormFix uses these collections to store information it has gleaned from forms and form sets.

 

See Also