Template design overview

Once a template is added to the template library, you can design it via the following steps.

Define Zones

Define specific zones for the different form fields. Each zone type has its specific color.

Zones can be defined by selecting the appropriate tool from the Zone tools section on the Home tab.

Define Text Anchor Zones

Navigate to the Home tab and click on the Text Anchor tool. It becomes highlighted and a list appears with the four types of text anchor zones.

Click on any of the four text anchor zone types; the cursor shape changes to the selected Text Anchor icon with a cross-hair in its top-left corner indicating that you can use it to mark an area as a particular type of zone.

The following cursors appear depending on the type of selection:

  • Positional text anchor cursor
  • Reference text anchor cursor
  • Selector text anchor cursor
  • Check text anchor cursor

Define Barcode Anchor Zones

Navigate to the Home tab and click on the Barcode Anchor tool. It becomes highlighted and a list appears with the four types of barcode anchor zones.

Click on any of the four barcode anchor zone types; the cursor shape changes to the selected Barcode Anchor icon with a crosshair in its top-left corner indicating that you can use it to mark an area as a particular type of zone.

The following cursors appear depending on the type of selection:

  • Positional barcode anchor cursor
  • Reference barcode anchor cursor
  • Selector barcode anchor cursor
  • Check barcode anchor cursor

Define Fill Text Zones

Navigate to the Home tab and click on the Fill text tool. It becomes highlighted and the cursor shape changes to the Fill text icon with a crosshair in its top-left corner indicating that you can use it to mark an area as a Fill text zone.

Filling Method: field filling method used; Default settings: Fill zone > Default, Barcode zone > Barcode, Checkbox zone > Optical mark, Dropout color picker- No OCR. It can be changed in the provided list.

Available values:

  • Default: The actual zone filling method for all zones of this type is queried just before recognition
  • OmniFont: It denotes a machine printed text with any typeface not highly stylized
  • 9-pin draft dot-matrix: It denotes a 9-pin draft dot-matrix printout
  • Barcode: It denotes a one-dimensional barcode within the zone
  • Optical mark: It denotes a zone with one or more check boxes that are judged to be marked or unmarked
  • Handprinted: It denotes hand-written text within the zone
  • 24-pin draft dot-matrix: It denotes a 24-pin draft dot-matrix printout
  • OCR-A: OCR-A zone filling method
  • OCR-B: OCR-B zone filling method
  • Magnetic ink: Magnetic ink character filling method
  • Dot-digit: Dot-digit zone filling method
  • Dash-digit: Dash-digit zone filling method
  • CMC7: CMC7 font zone filling method

Define Fillable Barcode Zones

Navigate to the Home tab and click on the Barcode tool. It becomes highlighted and the cursor shape changes to the Barcode icon with a crosshair in its top-left corner indicating that you can use it to mark an area as a Fillable barcode zone.

Define Checkbox Zones

Navigate to the Home tab and click on the Checkbox tool. It becomes highlighted and the cursor shape changes to the Checkbox icon with a crosshair in its top-left corner indicating that you can use it to mark an area as a Checkbox zone.

Alternatively, double left-click in a specific area where you wish to create a fill text zone, fillable barcode zone or a check box zone; the selected field zone type is automatically created in the rectangular field.

Keep in mind that the selected area must be well-defined with no holes in it, otherwise the created zone can easily occupy a significantly larger area then originally intended, resulting in improper template creation if ignored.

Define Comb Zones

Navigate to the Home tab and click on the Comb tool. It becomes highlighted and the cursor shape changes to the Comb icon with a crosshair in its top-left corner indicating that you can use it to mark an area as a Comb zone.

Use Reference Anchors

References can be set between a reference anchor and any type of fill zone. The purpose of this reference is to define relative the position of fillable fields to reference anchors.

To set reference between two zones, simply click Zone 1 (reference anchor) and Ctrl + click Zone 2 (fill zone)

If the reference is successfully set, the two zones are connected by an orange line.

Form Template Editor allows you to define the reading order of the fillable field zones. The reading order tools are useful if the automatic detection does not determine the correct zone order or if the manually created zones are not drawn in the required order.

Specify reading order of selected zones by selecting a tool from the Reorder section on the Zone selections tab.

The reading order icons are only active if at least two zone types are selected from the library zone list.

Use Dropout Color Picker Tool

Use the Dropout color picker tool if you encounter a form where the pre-printed information is in color (not black). This feature clears the whole page of the pre-printed color foreground form areas leaving only the data content to be extracted. This step is performed while the form processing application runs; it is not a visible operation, but simply influences the outcome.

This feature is also useful when the filled form page contains areas where data content overlaps form areas making it more difficult for the application to properly recognize the specific data.

Form Template Editor does not display the cleared page in the image view but simply disregards it when processing.

Follow the below steps to use Dropout color picker tool:

Navigate to the Home tab and click on the Dropout color picker tool. The cursor changes to Dropout color picker icon with a cross in its top-left corner indicating that you can mark the selected area for clearing it of the pre-printed color foreground form area.

Mark an area that contains some of the pre-printed color foreground and some background color as well.

Draw anchor zones and fillable field zones manually or click Auto process page to process the loaded form image.