ABBYY FormReader Automatic Form Input System A Guide to Creating MachineMachine-Readable Forms ABBYY Software House Moscow 2001 ABBYY Software House A Guide to Creating Machine-Readable Forms Information in this document is subject to change without notice and does not represent any commitment on the part of ABBYY Software House. The document is supplied as a part of the ABBYY FormReader package under a license agreement. No part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or otherwise, without the express written approval of ABBYY Software House. © ABBYY Software House (BIT Software), 1993-2001. All rights reserved. ABBYY, BIT Software, FineReader, "fountain image transformation," Lingvo, Scan&Read, Scan&Translate, "one button principle," "Your computer reads by itself," "Your computer reads and translates by itself" are registered trademarks of ABBYY. ABBYY FormReader, Try&Buy, DOCFLOW are trademarks of ABBYY. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. 125015, Moscow, p /b 72. ABBYY Software House. CONTENTS WHAT IS A FORM? ....................................................................................................................................5 WHAT IS A MACHINE-READABLE FORM? ..........................................................................................5 FORM COMPLETION M ...............................................................................................................................5 ETHODS......................................................................................................................................................5 ELEMENTS OF MACHINE-READABLE FORMS .............................................................................................6 TYPES OF MACHINE-READABLE FORMS ....................................................................................................6 Dropout color forms .............................................................................................................................7 Scanning...........................................................................................................................................7 Choosing the form color...................................................................................................................8 Advantages and disadvantages.........................................................................................................8 Gray forms............................................................................................................................................8 Scanning...........................................................................................................................................8 Advantages and disadvantages.........................................................................................................8 Black&white forms with raster background.........................................................................................9 Background filtering ........................................................................................................................9 Advantages and disadvantages.........................................................................................................9 Black&white forms with raster borders ...............................................................................................9 Black&white linear forms...................................................................................................................10 Advantages and disadvantages.......................................................................................................10 HOW TO CHOOSE A FORM TYPE...............................................................................................................11 Criteria for choosing the form type ....................................................................................................11 Hardware ........................................................................................................................................11 Volume, printing method, and form printing cost..........................................................................12 Image size and average form processing speed..............................................................................12 Editors for form creation................................................................................................................12 Table: Summary of form types - advantages and disadvantages........................................................12 GENERAL REQUIREMENTS FOR MACHINE-READABLE FORMS .................................................................14 Form background requirements .........................................................................................................14 Reference point requirements.............................................................................................................14 Requirements for black squares .....................................................................................................14 Requirements for static text............................................................................................................14 Requirements for lines ...................................................................................................................14 Requirements for barcode ..............................................................................................................14 Requirements for geometric field parameters ....................................................................................15 Raster dot size ................................................................................................................................15 Character space size .......................................................................................................................15 Line thickness.................................................................................................................................15 Print quality requirements..................................................................................................................15 Requirements for form completion .....................................................................................................16 CREATING MACHINE-READABLE FORMS........................................................................................16 FORM CREATION STAGES ........................................................................................................................16 DEVELOPING FORMS IN MICROSOFT VISIO 2000 ....................................................................................16 Attaching a stencil set.........................................................................................................................16 The form elements provided by the stencil .........................................................................................17 Form creation in MS Visio: example..................................................................................................18 Creating your own stencils.................................................................................................................20 Preparing an MS Visio form for professional printing ......................................................................21 DEVELOPING FORMS USING MICROSOFT WORD 2000 ............................................................................22 Preparing the workspace....................................................................................................................22 Paper size .......................................................................................................................................22 Page margins ..................................................................................................................................22 Grid ................................................................................................................................................22 Which is best - background or raster? ...............................................................................................23 Setting up the background. .................................................................................................................23 MS Word 2000 graphic tools used to develop machine-readable forms............................................23 Positioning form elements. .................................................................................................................23 Protecting the form.............................................................................................................................24 CERTIFICATION.......................................................................................................................................24 APPENDICES.............................................................................................................................................25 USEFUL TIPS. ...........................................................................................................................................25 IDENTIFICATION OF DIFFERENT FORMS PROCESSED IN THE SAME BATCH ..............................................26 CREATING A BARCODE USING CORELDRAW...........................................................................................27 RECOMMENDED COLORS FOR DROPOUT FORMS .....................................................................................29 What is a form? Questionnaires, social security forms, polling slips, warranty cards ­ all different types of form used to collect different types of information. How do forms differ from other types of documents? 1. A form has a set number of fields. 2. Field content is always determined by for example field name. E.g. a "Last Name" field contains only last names (if completed correctly), a "Date" field only dates, etc. 3. During form processing, only the field contents are of interest; all remaining form elements are disregarded. Gathering information can be a long and weary process, involving the input of hundreds if not thousands of forms. ABBYY FormReader, however, makes life much easier, allowing the whole process to be automated. The inputting process then consists of the following stages: 1. Application setup ­ the form to be processed is specified. A form template is created within the program, containing the geometrical locations of the fields and specifying the type of information to be contained within them and containing other field parameters. 2. Form processing. Completed forms are scanned and recognized (i.e. field images are converted into text) by the application. An existing template is used to identify form field positions and the type of information contained within them. Recognition results are subsequently verified and exported to a file or database. Easy? In theory, yes, in practice, no, as not all forms used to gather information are suitable for automated input. The aim of this guide is to explain exactly which requirements a form must meet if it is to be suitable for automated processing, and to show you how to create your own forms using Microsoft Visio 2000, Microsoft Word 2000, and Corel Draw. What is a machine-readable form? Two principal tasks are carried out during form recognition: 1. Locating fields. This is by no means an easy task as the scanned form image may be distorted in various ways e.g. stretched, skewed, or rotated. In order for these distortions to be corrected, the form must contain what are termed reference points. For more information on reference points and other form elements, see: "Elements of machine-readable forms", page 6. 2. Separating field contents from field borders The information entered in the fields must be clearly separated from other form elements: field borders, background, service, and explanatory text. In order for the application to do this correctly, the form must meet certain requirements; these requirements specify several form types. For more information on form types, see: "Types of machine-readable forms" (page 6). In order for the above two tasks to be carried out successfully, the forms must correspond to the form pattern exactly, i.e. forms of the same type must be printed using the same source document (pattern) so that the location of all form elements is identical on each one. If this is not the case, i.e. the location of fields on different copies of the form varies, the application will be unable to "find" the fields and, consequently, unable to recognize them. Copies of the form will only match the source document (pattern) by having the forms printed profession ...