FormFix can be used in several types of applications. Some examples are:

• Form processing
• Single-form processing
• Image sorting

You should consider other options in the following situations:

• Unstructured Form Processing

Form Processing

In a typical form processing system, your goal is to take images of various forms, recognize them, extract data from them, and save that data in a database.

You will want to use the following components in this scenario:

• FormDirector to define the forms and fields.
• FormFix to identify the images and drop out the form and to perform OMR if necessary.
• SmartZone OCR and SmartZone ICR (licensed and sold separately) to read machine and hand-printed data.
• ScanFix to perform some image clean-up at certain stages of the operation.

Identification

• FormFix uses a proprietary and industry-proven approach to form identification that matches a filled image of an unknown template to one of many template images in a set. It provides a confidence of the correctness of the match for the best matching template and other templates in the set. You can use the API to promote easy alignment of the filled image with the corresponding template image.
• In some cases, prior knowledge of the content of the filled image may allow you to provide FormFix more information to be used in identification and registration. FormFix can be configured to compare images at 90, 180, and 270 degrees, and exert different amounts of effort in the identification process.
• If you control the layout of your forms, you may get faster and more reliable identification by placing a different barcode on each type of form. Then, you can precisely identify your forms before using FormFix. The known identity of the filled image can be passed to FormFix's identification process to precisely register your image. Simply use the provided mechanism to limit identification to the single, correct template. You should also investigate FormFix's registration mark functionality as it may be faster and more reliable for some scenarios.

Single-Form Processing

A common simplification of general forms processing is a similar system that accepts only a single form. This is common in very low volume applications where a user scans and interactively processes a batch of pages with a consistent form. It is also common in a few high-volume applications, when a company sends out a single form to be filled out and returned for processing.

Although this scenario differs from the one above because form identification is not necessary, you can treat it the same as general-purpose form processing with an alternate form identification method, such as barcode.

Image Sorting

In an image sorting application, your goal is to take images of various forms, sort them by type, then archive the result. Typically, little or no data is captured in this type of system.

Use these components in these scenarios:

• FormDirector to define the set of candidate forms.
• FormFix to identify the images.
• ScanFix to perform some image clean-up.

If you want to align your archived images to match your template images, you should use FormFix to align them before you save them to disk and archive them.

Unstructured Form Processing

You should consider other options in this situation.

FormFix is designed to work with forms that have a consistent layout and can be prepared in advance. If you wish to process free-form documents, FormFix will not be very helpful. FormFix works best when processing structured documents where each field has a fixed position.