16.0.15

📅 2023-01-28

New features

Support for editing, detecting and outputting PDF form fields

The iDRS now has the notion of form field, and allows several operations around it:

  1. You can add and edit form fields in a CPageContent2 object

  2. During OCR processing, the iDRS can detect empty form fields, and automatically add candidates found in the CPageContent2 object

  3. Form fields can be added to the output PDF documents created later

The following form field types are supported:

  • Text

  • Combed text

  • Password

  • Checkbox

  • Radio buttons

  • List box

  • Drop-down list

  • Groups

For code snippets illustrating how to use this new feature, go to the Developer Guide at chapter Forms fields.

Coming soon

Future versions of iDRS will introduce the ability to import form fields from an input PDF, as well as to update data in an existing PDF form (new or updated fields).

Editing

A new class CPageInteractiveForm is created to handle form fields. It allows you to set or update the default form style via the CPageInteractiveForm.DefaultFieldStyle property, and the form fields themselves via the CPageInteractiveForm.FormFields property.

This class is accessible using the new property CPageMetadata.InteractiveForm.

Detecting

The new property COcrContext.EmptyFormsDetection allows to activate the detection of form fields during character recognition.

The detection results are available in the CPageInteractiveForm instance of the CPage content.

Scope of the detection feature
The detection feature can only find empty form fields, i.e. those that do not contain any written data. Form fields containing an existing value will NOT be detected.
Performance of form fields detection

When empty form field detection is enabled, recognition time is greatly increased.
Future versions of iDRS will reduce the processing overhead of this feature.

Output

If the CPage objects in the document to be created contain form fields AND the output type is PDF, then they will be added to the output.

Other formats do not yet support this feature; this possibility may be added in a future release, depending on business needs.

Improvements

N/A

Deprecated or removed resources

N/A

Fixed bugs

ID Description

IDRSRD-6307

The iDRS incorrectly detects Thai language on an English document

IDRSRD-6260

The iDRS crashes/hangs when detecting language and orientation of the attached document

IDRSRD-6262

The iDRS crashes when detecting the language of a specific image

IDRSRD-6199

Performance of iDRS corners detection feature can be improved

IDRSRD-6074

The iDRS crashes when aborting OCR processing during DRS_END phase

IDRSRD-6027

The iDRS processing time is slower with worker thread count higher than 1, for Asian languages

IDRSDEV-1503

The iDRS may crash when memory threshold is reached

IDRSDEV-1512

The id of iDRS C API macOS library should be set

IDRSDEV-1449

The iDRS should allow to add or edit Form fields on document pages

IDRSDEV-1443

The iDRS should be able to detect empty form fields on an image

IDRSDEV-780

The iDRS should be able to write Form data when creating a PDF document

Known Issues

ID Description

IDRSDEV-1543

iDRS Linux32 may crash during document output phase when memory monitoring is activated
Notion of Property in C++

For convenience and readability, from this version on, we will use the term Property as explained in the Glossary.