OCR Properties

This Help topic refers to the following editions:
þ Enterprise þ Professional þ Personal þ Small Business.

Each OCR Zone, whether for text or Bar Code information, has additional properties to help control the output of the OCR value.

The OCR Properties dialog above has two properties

• Process Order:  By Default each OCR Zone is process in the order it was created. You can change the order to enable a fields variable to be available before other fields are processed. for example a Lookup value my populate a invoice number, Invoice date and customer name. These fields value are now available for the next OCR value so the it can be included in its OCR result.
• Regular Expression: is a theoretical computer science and formal language theory defined by a sequence of characters that define a search pattern. DX uses this technology to help limit and control the results returned by the OCR engine.
• • Press the dots of ellipsis button to select from a list of Regular Expressions.
    
• Calculated OCR Value: After the OCR engine has capture a result, additional processing can be performed to alter the resulting value. This feature uses pascal function and language constructs to evaluate and manipulate the OCR Zones value. The following syntax should be used e.g. result := StripNonDate(OCRValue); , the following functions can also be called
• • StripNonDate(OCRValue) :  strips out all non date value and reformat it
  • StripNonNumeric(OCRValue) : strips out all non numerical values
  • ReplaceString(OCRValue, 'A', 'X') : finds all occurrences of single character and replaces it with any another value.
  • SoundexSimilar('Mary','Marry''): returns true/false as to whether the two word are similar in sound to one another
  • ContainsText('Needle', 'Haystack Needle'): function looks for a Needle string in a Haystack string, returning true if it finds it. Otherwise false.
  • FormatDateTime : function reformats a value date to other formats e.g FormeDateTime('yyyy/mm/dd', OCRValue);

You can also access OCR values of other fields and concatenate them together just by entering in the Index Set Display Label value e.g. result := Invoice_No+ ' '+ Invoice_Date. NOTE that certain letters are not allowed (Space, Pound, Dash and Periods) and should be replaced with the underscore character _ e.g.( result := Invoice # should enter in as result := Invoice__);

From the Calculated OCR Value Editor select the options Variables and drag and drop the system variables to you calculated expression.

• Default OCR Value: Allows you to set a default value if OCR Confidence value is lower than the actual OCR confidence engine value
• • Simply type in any valid value for the index field associated with the select OCR zone
• OCR Confidence Level

• • Enter in the minimum OCR level that the OCR Engine needs to report back before using the Default Value
    

• Ocr Results: This represents the raw information collected by the Ocr Engine before the OCR Properties are use to process this information

• Ocr Confidence: This represents the Ocr Engine confidence level in the Ocr result.

OCR Results

• • OCR Value: this represents the raw OCR information returned from the OCR engine
  • OCR Confidence: is the value generated by the OCR engine as to how close the OCR

Regular Expression Tester Dialog:

The Regular Expression dialog provides a list of predefined Regular Expressions that are commonly used. These expressions are used to filter out unwanted characters as shown by the Test string section highlighting only those characters that match a date pattern. You know most users have never hear of or been exposed to this technology and so when trying to adjust these expressions to fit your needs. We suggest that you use the Google search term "regular expression date or time" or what ever pattern your trying to match to see what the rest of Regular Expression Community has already developed.

To use this dialog simply select the description that best fits the type of text your typing to filter. Then add additional text in the Test String field and press the Test button to see if the expression highlights the text to be filtered. Then press OK button to except the item and return to the prior dialog.

If you need to refine the predefined Regular Express simply change the Regular Expression text until the desired results are produced.

The hyperlink above is a great free resource to help lean and test Regular Expressions.