[Quexf-discuss] Importing forms and banding

[Martin S. <ma...@be...>]

Hello folks (I'm back :),

I'm working on building a form and getting it working with queXF, and
I've encountered a few troubles; I'm hoping perhaps someone has some
suggestions or comments on how they use queXF (i.e. what works).

Here's my list:

 1. The data script database/quexf.sql has a warning with MySQL 5.0.54,
specifically about "Unknown table 'formboxesgroupsbelow90'" when it
tries to drop a view, if it exists, before creating it. Seemed weird,
but overall didn't cause any problems as I always ran the script on an
empty database.
 
 2. functions/functions.image.php -- there's all kinds of constants in
this file. I'm not sure they work with my images, and even worse, there
is some missing range checking, so they don't just fail to find lines,
they actually spit out errors. This biggest offender was
"imagecolorat($image, $x, $y);" which I had to replace with
"imragecolorat($image, min($x,imagesx($image)-1),
min($y,imagesy($image)-1));". Once I checked ranges, it failed to find
registration marks for cropping, but at least it didn't entirely blow up
:).

 3. admin/band.php:233 -- when I try to band a scanned PDF, I get all
kinds of failures about not being able to pull the PNG data out of the
database, e.g. "gd-png: fatal libpng error: Read Error: truncated data",
"gd-png error: setjmp returns error condition", "Passed data is not in
'PNG' format". But showpage.php has no trouble with it -- I only get
errors once I've selected a field box. Am I scanning at the wrong
resolution or otherwise producing a file that GD can't compose with the
red field indicator box? If I use the cleanly generated empty/blank PDF,
it works great. When I use a higher quality scan, it can't find the
barcode. When I use the lower quality scan, it breaks on the PDF images
when banding (when it tried to alpha overlay the red boxes, I think).

Overall, the storage mechanism for the PNGs looks like it should be
using ADOdb's updateBlob(), and maybe that is causing some of my
problems, though I can't figure out why cleanly generated Apache FOP
PDFs work, and my scanned one blows up *only* once I select a field (...
is it possible the image inside the scanned PDF isn't PNG, and the
conversion to PNG fails? or I convert at a different dpi? or gd fails
the overlay?).

Let me know if I can send anyone the PDF I'm using, or if there's a
recommended scanner setting (dpi, size, etc) for this kind of thing.

Thanks,

Martin Smith, Systems Developer
ma...@be...
Bureau of Economic and Business Research
University of Florida
(352) 392-0171 Ext. 221