AutoOCR ReadMe

AutoOCR	MAY Computer
ReadMe	v1.7.1, 2009-07-15

General Purpose
Installation
Commandline Parameters
Notes
Custom Actions
Revision History
Contact Information

General Purpose

The AutoOCR application is a PDF conversion engine based on multiple OCR engines.

Installation

Run the setup executable or the Windows Installer package.

Prerequisites:

Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista with IE6
NET 2.0 Runtime

Commandline Parameters

The command line parameters supported by the AutoOCR are listed in the table bellow. The command line syntaxt is the following:

AutoOCR.exe /SrcFile=["]<source_file_path>["] [/DstFile=["]<dst_file_path>["]] [/Engine=["]<engine>["]]

If the SrcFile parameter is not specified the AutoOCR will start with the UI.

Parameter	Description
/SrcFile=["]<source file path["]	The fully qualified of the source / input file.
/DstFile=["]<destination file path["]	The fully qualified file path of the destination / output file. If this parameter is not specified the output file will be: <sourcefilepath>\<sourcefilename>.pdf. The default output format is PDF. If the destination file already exist then it will be overwritten.
/Engine=["]EngineID["]	Available engine identifiers: FREngine: Abbyy Fine Reader 8 Engine; iOCR: iOCR command line engine; Generic: generic OCR engine. If this parameter is not specified the AutoOCR will search for the first available engine which supports the source file as input and the destination file as output.
/ShowAction	Displays the custom action script editor in the folder properties dialog box. If this parameters is not specified the action script customization is not possible
/ShowScriptErrors	Displays the error/exception messages generated by the custom action script
/SuspendAutoQuit	The application will not stop automatically even the "Quit application after all files were processed" option was checked on.

The AutoOCR application has a feature to execute custom action scripts before/after processing a file. Two managed programming languages are supported: C# and VB.NET. A custom action script is a class which implements the OCR.IAction interface. The class should be named "Action". Steps to create a custom action script:

Open the Visual C# 2005 Express or Visual Basic 2005 Express(free IDEs);
Create a new project(no matter what kind a project);
Add a reference to the OCR.dll assembly;
Create a new class;
Inherit and implement the OCR.IAction interface;
Customize your code;
Save and copy the content of your class;
Start the AutoOCR with the /ShowAction option;
Select and display the properties of an input folder;
A new tab page will be displayed: Action
Configure the action: enable the action, select the appropiate language, add the assemblies used by your project in the assembly references list;
Paste the code in the code editor(Code tab page) and press the OK button.

To debug your script please start the AutoOCR with the /ShowScriptErrors function and AutoOCR will display the error messages during the custom object creation and functions call.

When a new folder is added a default custom action script is also created. You can customize also directly in the AutoOCR the custom action script code.

The IAction interface has the following functions:

PreAction(string inputFile, string outputFile): the function is called before the file specified by the inputFile parameters is processed. The outputFile parameters specifies the path of the destination file. When this function is called the output file does not exist. It is recommended to store the inputFile and the outputFile parameters to member variables to be able to access these variables at later time. Any initialization should be done in this function;
PostAction(string error): the function is called after the input file was processed. If the error parameter is a null reference object or an empty string the processing was successful otherwise the error parameters contains the error message. The PostAction is called before the built-in actions of the AutoOCR;
Dispose(): the method is inherited from the IDisposable interface. AutoOCR calls this function imediatelly after the PostAction. Any cleanup operations should be done in this function.

Revision History

Version	Date	Changes
1.7.1	2009-07-15	PDF/A, new enhancements
1.6.1	2008-06-27	enhacements & fixes; 2660, 2661, 2662, 2657,1846, 2263
1.5.5	2008-06-24	online licensing; additional output formats (DOC,RTF,TXT...); output folder; PDF/A-1b support (profile fields, independent of the OCR engine).
1.5.4	2007-10-23	bugfixes in the FREngine plugin
1.5.3	2007-07-24	2058: now the application will not display a message box(does not ask for exit) if the option is selected. Please note that the auto quit application is only working if at least one file processed and the "Auto Start Processing" option is not checked on. If the "Auto start processing" is checked on the first end of processing of all files does not quit the application. The second time - when all files processed - the application will quit. The application has this behavior because it can happen that (if the "Auto start processing" is checked on) the input folder always contains a file so that the application would start, process and exit and the user does not have time to control the application(i.e. to uncheck the option).
1.5.1	2007-05-29	FREngine - PDF/A Support
1.4.5	2007-05-02	german UI changes; C# and VB.NET samples are installed under "<application installation folder>\Custom Action Samples" folder.
1.4.4	2007-05-02	user interface changes; custom action samples. Custom action samples can be found in the application installation directory.
1.4.3	2007-04-30	BUGFIX:1888(Problem/hangup after workstation lock/unlock).
1.4.2	2007-04-30	the iOCR setup was included; additional launching options were added to the Generic OCR engine;
1.4.1	2007-04-27	Generic OCR engine improvements; custom action scripts.
1.3.3	2007-04-27	BUGFIX: uppercase extensions are not recognized.
1.3.2	2007-04-27	german user interface; additional generic OCR engine implementation;
1.3.1	2007-04-20	Command line support was added; FREngine: Table analysis parameters are implemented; Additional (database) log filtering was implemented.
1.2.3	2007-04-18	BUGFIX:1888(Problem/hangup after workstation lock/unlock)
1.2.2	2007-04-16	licensing; tray icon animation; iOCR engine: language, registration button; solved topics: 1880,1881, 1855, 1860, 1854.
1.2.1	2007-04-13	performance and stability improvements; bugfix: the return code of the iOCR engine was not checked; the result PDF documents are marked, a custom metadata field was added; folder dialog box improvements; application startup improvements; enhanced logging features. solved topics: 1884, 1847, 1878, 1877, 1866
1.1.0	2007-04-11	the application was renamed to AutoOCR; the performance and stability was improved; the processing status reporting was improved(animated icon was added); MAPI error reporting was added, the default mail reporting engine now is set to MAPI(SMTP is also available); recognition language selection was added to the FREngine; the remaining / available OCR pages are displayed in the settings pane of the FREngine; solved topics: 1863, 1867, 1848, 1861(?), 1858, 1864, 1857, 1856, 1853, 1849; 1845, 1859: the error and the archive folder are created first time when a file should be copied in these folders, so these folders are not created aotomatically at application startup only when it is needed.
1.0.0	2007-04-02	First Version

Contact Information

Technical support and latest information on our products available at http://support.may.co.at/

E-Mail support for this application: mailto:support@may.co.at

MAY Computer GmbH
Microsoft Certified Partner
Galvanigasse 2
A-1210 Vienna / Austria
Tel.: +43/1/278 20 80, Fax: +43/1/278 20 80 - 22
http://www.may.co.at/
mailto:may@may.co.at