FormDirector provides some other functionality to support the atypical form processing scenario. The following pages describe this functionality.

Use OtherDataItems: An Example

FormAssist uses the OtherDataItems property of the Field class to store a classifier of the field; the field is classified by the output of its operations.

To do this FormAssist creates and adds a DataItem to the OtherDataItems collection. It sets classification by setting the DataItem Content string to one of the values: “OMR”, “Clip”, “ICR”, or “OCR”. And in order to distinguish this classification DataItem from a collection of possibly many DataItems, FormAssist sets the Type string to “Pegasus/Type”.

The code samples below demonstrate the same.

dataItem.Type = "Pegasus/Type";  //This specifies that ICR, OCR or OMR versions of recognition are used for the field being processed.

dataItem.Content = "ICR";  //Specifies ICR recognition is being used for the field.
dataItem.Content = "OCR"; //Specifies OCR recognition is being used for the field.
dataItem.Content = "OMR"; //Specifies OMR recognition is being used for the field.
field.OtherDataItems.Add(dataItem); //Add the dataItem to the field

Typically the FormFix component will be used to create field clips, however there may be some scenarios where there is a desire to not use FormFix. In these cases, FormDirector’s Field class provides the functionality to create field clips.

Input and Output Data

• Original Form Image - An original form image can be obtained by FormDirector from a TemplateImage, from a file using ImagXpress, of from another forms processing component which can load images in memory.
• Field Location - A Field object contains location references and all associated attributes to define a single rectangular region on a form image.
• Field Clip - A Field Clip is the copied image pixels of the rectangular Field region.

Create Field Clips

1. Load the original form image into memory using one of the means described above. If a FormDefinition object exists that represents the given form, the suggested means of loading the image is by using one of TemplateImage’s properties: Bitmap, Hbitmap, Hdib, or Image.
2. Extract the location of the field from the Field object’s Location property.
3. Call the appropriate method (ClipBitmap, ClipHbitmap, ClipHdib, ClipImage) of the Field class to generate the field clip.