The question seems to be weird, but I need to ask this, since I am witnessing a quite interesting output when I compare text as image and graphics as image.
Ideally I am in process of identifying an tool, or algorithm to compare two pdfs, generate output which will highlight the difference between them.
There are possibilities in pdfs, which will have text as image format (legacy text on papers, are converted to pdfs).
and we are doing migration of those legacy pdfs, and finally we are comparing with legacy and converted pdf output.
I am evaluating couple of tools like Adobe dc pro, i-net pdfc and power pdf etc, for comparing two pdfs.
While evaluating, I am able to see graphic images are getting compared(not accurate either) on either side of the pdfs. Where as text as images are completely ignored, unanimously same results in all the tools.
But I am more interested in text as image, since we deal more of legacy text pdfs.
Below, is attached graphic image comparison result, where it could able to capture the differences between the images.
But when I compare text image, differences are not highlighted in the tool.
What I understand from this, text is not compared as image graphics, and tool is completely ignoring the comparison. I would like have clarification whether my assumption is correct.
Secondly, I would like to know how to compare text image in pdfs to generate the differences?.
I'm working for the company that is author of i-net PDFC so I'll answer your first question as well:
Your assumption is correct. i-net PDFC is able to compare images and shapes, but it cannot detect if some content completely changed it's meaning, e.G. a line shape that is used to draw a letter or in your case an image that has to be recognized as text. Recognizing ASCII art as image won't work for the same reason either. Such cases will always be detected as differences even though their visual appearance is similar.
On your second question: Using an OCR conversion tool for one or both documents is a common solution to this problem. A simple image comparison of the compared pages in unlikely to work due to the different font styles and line wrappings in the converted file.
Please note that most OCR applications will use the rendered page images for the recognition. This may lead to incorrect recognition results even if there are no images in the PDF file.
i-net Software is aware of this general issue and an OCR module is currently in development. It'll provide an option to apply the recognition solely to the images in the PDF files.
Related
Noticed that images sometimes are sliced up in PDFs.
Steps:
insert an image with a high resoultion (3000x1800) into a .docx
use "Microsoft Print to PDF" option of Word to convert to PDF
extracting all images with pdfimages or pymupdf
Result:
Image is sliced horizontally into three images
Questions:
What exactly happens in the in the transition from .docx to pdf (or in generell in the process to pdf) that makes the converter slice it up into three images instead of one?
Do the individuell XObjects of the sliced images contain information which says that these three images belong to originally one?
How do I know how the images are sliced (horizontally / vertically) and what if originally there were two images inserted into the .docx file and both of them are sliced. Can you tell if slice x belongs to original image y or z?
So, as you have found out: because the code which generates the PDF choose to do so.
The technical reasons may be various - it could be that historically there were printers which would only have so much memory, and would need to get limiterd size-images when printing, and someone at some point when writing the PDF export code present in Microsoft Office choose to apply this limit.
Anyway, technically, as put in the comments, an image in a PDF file could be composed of unlimited smaller images collated together.
Now, the second part, and your actual question: to know whether images ibn a PDF file belong together in a single original image one would need a custom extractor tool to check the geometry of all images in the document and find out which images have no margins or boundaries with others - it would not be that hard to do for well behaved files (which we can't know if MS Office generated files are: there are ways to obfuscate image positioning by making it indirectly). The metadata in the image-parts may or may not contain information that would allow one to recompose the original image: it would be up to the code generating the PDF to include this metadata or not - but the geometry can't lie in this case: if the final document presents a single image visually, it is possible to detect that when fetching the images.
I have successfully built a two column report in MS-Access (2013, if that matters). What I can't seem to find out, is how to get a separator line between the columns.
I have tried to draw a vertical line in the details area, but this is not working when some fields in the detail area can grow. The line does not grow, and there doesn't seem to be a "grow" option for lines.
What am I missing? If MS-Access does not offer this, is there a way to do this programmatically?
I think your easiest solution is to create an image - about the size of your page - with a vertical line in the middle, then use that image as a page background for your report.
From my experience, the best quality/wheight you can get is when your image is in the EMF (enhanced Meta file) format, a Microsoft vector format.
This is not supported by many tools. I use Inkscape (free) when I need that. And from my limited experience, (free) Inkscape gives better results than (expensive) Illustrator for that use case.
Alternatively, you can create such background image as a Word document, save to PDF, then find an online PDF to EMF converter.
I'm making a poster (sort of) and would like to do these things, but I'm not sure if AsciiDoc or AsciiDoctor can do them, and if so, how:
Background image that can be stretched to the poster's dimensions
A rectangle with some transparency and a border, basically a bright frame, with text in it.
An image with text in it.
Text inside an image inside a rectangle.
(Bonus question: Is it possible to free-form specify where something goes, e.g. x=80%, y = 20% for something in the top right corner?)
I'm not sure that it makes sense to use AsciiDoc to source poster output, as opposed to a desktop publishing tool or a graphics program.
But if you are converting to HTML, you should be able to accomplish most of this with clever sourcing and some CSS/JavaScript on the front end. That is, you can source some of the metadata you want to impose on the final image, then have front-end code do the manipulation and imposition. For instance, you can provide a caption, classes, a title, and other info in the source, but AsciiDoc is intentionally agnostic about how that stuff is handled in output.
However, unless you need to create these things as part of technical documents, especially ones getting built/generated recuringly with automation, you're likely better off with a specialized tool.
I'm currently trying to achieve this:
I have a very large TIFF image, which contains scanned documents. The image contains invoices with barcodes/QR codes, followed by multiple other scanned documents related to the invoice which preceded them. This can be repeated multiple times ( the TIFF image may look like [invoice] + [documents] + [invoice] + [documents] ... )
I need a program (doesn't really matter in which language but I'd prefer either Java, JavaScript, PHP, C++ or Python) that takes said TIFF image, scans all the barcodes and returns their values and their position in the image (either which page it is on or it's absolute position, but the page is preferable, I know for certain that there won't be multiple barcodes on one page). The goal is to split this TIFF image into multiple PDF files, each containing only one invoice and all of the documents that belong to the invoice.
I have the latter part done already. I intend to use ImageMagick to split the TIFF file into multiple files (tested, works). I have also tried multiple barcode scanning methods, but met critical problems at every one. And that's the point of my question:
Is any of my presumptions false? Is there a better way/library/SW that you know about that could work?
Libraries/SW I tried so far:
ZXing port for PHP: Can't work with TIFF files
ZXing github
Quagga for JavaScript: Can't work with TIFF files either.
Quagga github
ZBar code reader: The best looking one by far. I managed to scan multiple QR codes in one TIFF image using CMD (Windows), but didn't find a way to get their positions. Also found out that C++ and Python versions exist, but didn't get to try them out just yet.
Thanks for any ideas/corrections.
The best one I heard -that is subjective ofc- is Barcode Rendering Framework
I'm not sure if it can detect multiple barcodes on a page but it can detect many different types of barcodes.
And it's also Open Source..
Does anyone knows about any editor allowing to visually design a form (by form I do not mean DFM or Delphi form, but a "paper form", like those pre-printed forms that you fill with some info) and that generates pascal commands to draw that form in a Printer (or Image) canvas?
What I want is an easy way to draw/design this form visually, composed just by lines and text, and a way to convert this to Pascal commands that when run, will draw that form in a Canvas (Image or Printer), respecting the original layout and scale, doesn't matter the Canvas DPI where it is being drawn.
Update: Maybe I wasn't clear enough about what I need and why I need it. I developed an Open Source component called TFreeBoleto (freeboleto.sf.net). It is used to generate and print bank billets (a common method for billing people in Brazil). Right now, the component uses a TBitmap image containing the "billet" mask, and TextOut methods for the dynamic areas (ie: billet number, customer name, etc). It is fine when looked in the screen, but some people complains that the quality of the printed image is not good. The component uses a BltTBitmapAsDib procedure to maximize the quality of printing, but some people still think it is not good enough. So, my idea was to avoid using a bitmap image as the form layout, and draw everything direct in the canvas (both form and printer). Check here for a sample of what a bank billet looks like.
Of course ReportBuilder and/or FastReport could solve the problem, but they are not free, so I cannot include it in the component. I need "native" solution that any standard Delphi install would be able to compile.
You might get what you want out of the Fast Reports Report Designer which is a commercial reporting system for Delphi. Remember that a report is just a page. That page can be shown on the screen or printed on the printer.
You also might find that something like TRichView helps you.
Whether using TRichView in particular or not, I would look into using HTML to do what you want. I would use HTML+CSS to do both a screen and printer layout, that can also be viewed on the web. For simple text layout plus text boxes I think even bare HTML and HTML tables might be sufficient. To visually design simple text pages, using a Delphi application, I would use TRichView.
In both cases, you would be creating documents, not code. To create code that creates a page, without using any document system, would be very difficult indeed, and I am not sure what you would really do with that code, since you would need a compiler or interpreter to convert that code into something that you could use. Please clarify what you mean by "creating code", and what syntax you would want that code to be using. If HTML is code in your definition of "code" then maybe HTML is the best kind of "code" for your problem.
I do my form-work with WPTools. It is also a commercial product. The core is a very good wordprocessor and form-designer. The engine can render text and forms to any canvas (screen, printer, also create pdf) and is highly flexible. Output is mainly rtf and html.
I also see no advantage in creating pascal code to redraw the form. What you need, i think, is a good WYSIWYG-editor which creates a document that fits your needs.
Check out ReportBuilder # http://www.digital-metaphors.com/
It is a commercial reporting tool for Delphi - around a long time, very high quality, with all native Delphi source code packaged with it. I am using it for an important commercial project right now and I recommend it highly (I'm not working for them.) I've used MANY Delphi reporting tools over the years and this one is the best IMO.
RBuilder also has extensive support for paper form emulation see:
http://www.digital-metaphors.com/products/report_design/form_emulation.html
I haven't worked with that feature, but you can download a full-featured demo and try it.
Yoy can use Adobe Acrobat (full version) to create forms.
Then you can use free Acrobat Reader to display and print forms or other COM object in your application.
I think it is best solution for you.
PS
All tools for reports that are included in Delphi are free for you to design form and are free to distribute if user only preview and print already designed reports.
The same is valid for Adobe Acrobat (you may distribute forms) but you have added that you need to print form and some text over form. Maybe it is easier if you use reports but it is possible to do the same using PDF.
Most report engines are not open source but are free to distribute. There is many components for creating PDF - paid (one time), free, as well as open source.
PPS
I have read your updete for second time. Since you are using TBitmap and you can to TextOut so: You can use TMetafile. There is many editors for metafiles and it is free to distribute metafiles.