One of the challenges for blind workers has been making paper forms accessible. Here is a product review that sheds light on current technology in this area. Jamal ---------- Published in the December 1997 issue of the Monitor, the monthly magazine of the Capital PC User Group, Inc. Norton Omniform 2.0 reviewed by Lou Miller OmniForm 2.0 by Caere Corporation is an excellent Windows 95/NT program that will convert your paper forms to electronic forms. We tested the program by converting a 9-page insurance questionnaire into an OmniForm document. This questionnaire contained hundreds of data elements and could easily have taken weeks of effort to build using other tools. Our Management Information Services department, which prefers COBOL and text-based terminals, begged off the job, claiming the resources required to convert the form were not worth the benefits we would reap. We saw an opportunity to prove the tools available on the PC platform could be effective and efficient. Building the form You don't just wake up in the morning and say, "Today I am going to take this paper form and put it into my computer," even if you are using PC-based technology. It's not that simple, but there are certain well-defined steps to follow to accomplish this task: 1 Scan the form. Place the paper form in a scanner and use scanner software to create an electronic copy. 2. Clean up the form. The scanner image is never perfect. You must correct it. 3. Work on the data elements. Build and define fields; tie the form to an underlying database engine. Step 1:Scan the form OmniForm software drives scanners, interprets the scanned image, and converts it into editable text and data fields. OmniForm uses optical character recognition (OCR), the world's best according to Caere, and Caere's "Logical Form Recognition" technology to accomplish these tasks. If you have never used this type of software, you are in for a treat. The scanner sends the computer a string of bits that represents whether a particular spot on a page is colored or blank. OCR technology takes this information and identifies the text and graphic elements. When OCR technology is finished, you have a page that can be edited as text rather than as a bit map. The Logical Form Recognition technology takes this a step further: It defines and creates data fields. It identifies different types of form objects and fields automatically. It will create tables and check boxes. It can even insert calculations automatically. When we were finished scanning the 9-page insurance form, we had an OmniForm file complete with data fields. From start to finish, this process took about 2 hours. If you do not have a scanner, OmniForm can still work for you. Fax the form to your fax software, save the form as a .TIFF or .PCX file, and OmniForm will use that as a basis for the form. OmniForm form edit tools also allow you to build a form from scratch. Step 2. Clean up the form No scanning software is perfect. The number of errors generated is dependent on the quality of the source. It took quite a long time to clean up the 9-page insurance form, probably more than a day, but the text on the original was small and the background of the form was colored. Error: Words are misspelled. Misspellings occur from three causes. OmniForm could not interpret the bit map data as a letter or other form object. OmniForm will misinterpret a letter and place a wrong letter on the form. Or the input was in error. All these errors must be cleaned up. OmniForm provides a spellchecker to help with this process. Error: Data fields are created improperly. When OmniForm sees a line, it usually assumes it is a data entry field. The insurance form had subsections set off by lines. Each time OmniForm created data entry fields for the title of the subsection and the line above the subsection title. OmniForm will also create date entry fields of the wrong type. For instance, it can make a field that is a check box a regular text field. OmniForm provides a good set of tools to work with data fields. All data fields can be highlighted, listed, deleted, and added. The remarkable feature of OmniForm is the astonishing accuracy of its data field creation software, and not the few errors it generated. Error: Objects are not lined up. Omniform provides tools for aligning objects. The alignment tools are align left, right, top, bottom, center horizontally, and center vertically. The sizes of objects can be made uniform by selecting a group of similar objects and adjusting the size one time for the group. However, one tool is missing -- OmniForm cannot adjust the horizontal or vertical spacing of objects. In figure 1 there are many boxes. OmniForm has no tool to even out the spacing automatically between the boxes in each vertical column. You must adjust the spacing manually. Step 3: Work on the data elements When OmniForm finishes creating the form, it gives the data elements generic names: Checkbox107, Table6, Filltext23. If your only purpose is to be able to print the form, then there is no requirement to change these names. However, if you intend to store and retrieve the data entered with the form, then the generic names should be changed to names that better reflect the content of the fields. This step was the most time consuming of all, and we decided to finish the process only for the first two pages of the form. These were the two pages the company had the most control over. These two pages contained well over 100 data items. OmniForm supports logical fields, comb fields (filters to force the dashes in social security numbers or the parentheses in phone numbers), and general purpose fields. Fields can be typed (general, numerical, alphabetical, and so forth), read-only, default filled, picked from a list, or kept within a certain value range. A number of fields can be grouped so that only one field may be selected. A help message can be created for each field. OmniForm provides complete control over the form's tab order. You cannot make a field conditionally fillable. For example: If you have designed a form that has the field "Play Sports Yes/No," you cannot have a second set of fields that specify the sport (Baseball, Football, Tennis) conditional upon a true value being entered in the first field. Default values are inserted by creating a calculation that returns the value to be entered. OmniForm supports basic mathematical, text, time, date, and statistical functions as well as an "if" statement. The form is now finished and ready for use. Using the form The OmniForm product can be used in design mode or fill mode. As soon as you are finished designing the form, you can hit the Fill button and start entering data. OmniForm will automatically create a database for the form and save the data you enter. Once the data are entered, OmniForm provides tools to search and select records from the database. OmniForm will export and import data from ODBC-compliant databases. Omniform will also allow you to share forms with other users and mail others copies of forms and data. You can, of course, print the form, and it will look like the original. However, there are some real limitations. OmniForm will not allow multiple users to use the same database simultaneously. OmniForm lets you share a form, but when you do, you only see a copy of the underlying database. You cannot save your changes back to the original database. Not all OmniForm users need own a copy of the full OmniForm program. Caere also markets an OmniForm Filler program with no design capabilities. It can only be used to view and fill forms. The cost for OmniForm direct from Caere is $149, and the cost for one filler license is $79. You can buy these products locally for $159.99 and $91, respectively. Multiple license packs are also available. The local price for a 10-license pack is $559.99, and a 20-license pack is $901.99. Other features OmniForm supports object linking and embedding (OLE) automation and other design tools not mentioned in this review. Summary We liked this product. It was easy to work with and did what it said it would. It's very capable. Its major limitation is lack of multiuser support. We will continue to investigate OmniForm but will probably not be using it for the insurance form. The Omniform version of the form is ready to go but the current plan for the insurance form is to collect the data across the Internet. OmniForm makes an Internet product as well, but it needs a database connection. If we have to write the database connection anyway, there is no need to use OmniForm. We will input the data directly into the database connection tool. The forms will no longer look like the insurance company's forms, but we will be collecting the data in a multiuser capable database. Norton Omniform 2.0 - Requirements: Windows 95 or NT 3.51, 8 Mbytes of RAM (12 Mbytes with Windows NT), 10-Mbyte hard disk - Source: Caere Corporation, 100 Cooper Court, Los Gatos, CA 95030, (800) 223-7346, (408) 395-7000, fax (800) 437- 3299, http://www.caere.com/. - Price: $149. Lou Miller is a system/financial analyst with a large local corporation. ================================================================ Copyright 1997, by the Capital PC User Group, Inc. All rights reserved. Permission for reproduction in whole or in part is hereby granted to other non-profit and computer user groups for internal, non-profit use, provided credit is given to the Capital PC Monitor and to the author(s) of the reproduced material, and attribution of copyright is included. Permission is also granted for posting on electronic bulletin board systems, provided credit is given to the Capital PC Monitor and to the author(s) of the reproduced material, and the files are made available in their entirety, without alteration, including this notice. All other reproduction, other than for personal use, without the prior written permission of the Capital PC User Group is prohibited. Unless specifically stated, opinions expressed in any article or column are those of the individual author(s) and do not necessarily represent an official position or endorsement of the Capital PC User Group. Capital PC User Group, Inc. Plaza East Two 51 Monroe Street Rockville, Maryland 20850 MIX BBS: (301) 738-9060 (10 MultiTech v.34 modems) (301) 738-9061 Alternative modem Office: (301) 762-9372