RE: ImagePlus VisualInfo Scanning on AS/400

["Marion, Bob" <Bob.Marion@xxxxxx>]

Correct $895 is not much and Input Accel offers the same type of solution
for $600 for software to capture on a low end scanner, the issue is when I
multiple either of these numbers by 500 units and then add additional server
software cost, plus managing this software and environment.  So I am
searching for a solution to enhance the VI scanning module either on the
client or on the AS/400.  If anyone has enhanced the VI scanning module on
the 400 I would appreciate a reply.   



Bob Marion
Sr. Specialist
Phone:  972/461-3186
Fax:  972/461-3010
EMail:  bob.marion@ps.net


-----Original Message-----
From: Randy Dufault [mailto:Randy_Dufault@mmi.net]
Sent: Wednesday, March 29, 2000 4:15 PM
To: MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com
Subject: RE: ImagePlus VisualInfo Scanning on AS/400


<snip>
 and the Input Accel or Kofax products are cost 
 prohibitive in this
 configuration. *** So this gets me to the first question of 
 how to enhance
 IBMs document capture engine to recognize such things as 
 patch codes as to
 separate documents, or allow for passing of fields from a 
 window screen,
</snip>

The entry level list price for Kofax Ascent is $895 for 5K scans/month.
Coupled with a low-end SCSI scanner and ISIS drivers that gets you
everything you are asking for with no muss/no fuss and almost 0 cost. The
next license point (25K scans) is still only $3K or so. The only alternative
is to pick up someone's toolkit, like Kofax's or Diamond Head's and write
your own thing. Speaking from experience, you are going to spend an awful
lot of time and money rolling your own and will end up with minimal function
at best.

<snip>
etc??  Second question:  On the AS/400 we have researched how 
to split up a
multi page document through APIs, etc, but have not found a 
solution, the
documents are stored in STMF format in the IFS, anyone have a 
suggestion on
how to manipulate this type of data?   The images are in 
format TIFF6 and
CCITT Group 4 compressed.
</snip>

Tiff images are sooo easy to split up. All you need to do is open them up as
a stream and write out each page to a new file. All you need to update are
the offsets in the Tiff header and set the next IFD offset to zero. Real
easy to do in C, haven't tried it in RPG. Get a copy of the Tiff spec, there
really isn't anything to it.

You could actually do this with the image convert and host print transform
APIs but they will muck up the image in the process.

Randy Dufault

+---
| This is the Midrange System Mailing List!
| To submit a new message, send your mail to MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com.
| To subscribe to this list send email to MIDRANGE-L-SUB@midrange.com.
| To unsubscribe from this list send email to MIDRANGE-L-UNSUB@midrange.com.
| Questions should be directed to the list owner/operator:
david@midrange.com
+---
+---
| This is the Midrange System Mailing List!
| To submit a new message, send your mail to MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com.
| To subscribe to this list send email to MIDRANGE-L-SUB@midrange.com.
| To unsubscribe from this list send email to MIDRANGE-L-UNSUB@midrange.com.
| Questions should be directed to the list owner/operator: david@midrange.com
+---