I created a database using Image Reference and disappointed by the limited number of file formats. Does anyone know how I can include .pdf and .tiff?
Announcement
Collapse
The Alpha Software Forum Participation Guidelines
The Alpha Software Forum is a free forum created for Alpha Software Developer Community to ask for help, exchange ideas, and share solutions. Alpha Software strives to create an environment where all members of the community can feel safe to participate. In order to ensure the Alpha Software Forum is a place where all feel welcome, forum participants are expected to behave as follows:
Be sure all comments and threads you post are respectful. Posts that contain any of the following content will be considered a violation of your agreement as a member of the Alpha Software Forum Community and will be moderated:
If a thread or post is found to contain any of the content outlined above, a moderator may choose to take one of the following actions:
Moderators may also rename posts and threads if they are too generic or do not property reflect the content.
Moderators may move threads if they have been posted in the incorrect forum.
Threads/Posts questioning specific moderator decisions or actions (such as "why was a user banned?") are not allowed and will be removed.
The owners of Alpha Software Corporation (Forum Owner) reserve the right to remove, edit, move, or close any thread for any reason; or ban any forum member without notice, reason, or explanation.
Community members are encouraged to click the "Report Post" icon in the lower left of a given post if they feel the post is in violation of the rules. This will alert the Moderators to take a look.
Alpha Software Corporation may amend the guidelines from time to time and may also vary the procedures it sets out where appropriate in a particular case. Your agreement to comply with the guidelines will be deemed agreement to any changes to it.
Bonus TIPS for Successful Posting
Try a Search First
It is highly recommended that a Search be done on your topic before posting, as many questions have been answered in prior posts. As with any search engine, the shorter the search term, the more "hits" will be returned, but the more specific the search term is, the greater the relevance of those "hits". Searching for "table" might well return every message on the board while "tablesum" would greatly restrict the number of messages returned.
When you do post
First, make sure you are posting your question in the correct forum. For example, if you post an issue regarding Desktop applications on the Mobile & Browser Applications board , not only will your question not be seen by the appropriate audience, it may also be removed or relocated.
The more detail you provide about your problem or question, the more likely someone is to understand your request and be able to help. A sample database with a minimum of records (and its support files, zipped together) will make it much easier to diagnose issues with your application. Screen shots of error messages are especially helpful.
When explaining how to reproduce your problem, please be as detailed as possible. Describe every step, click-by-click and keypress-by-keypress. Otherwise when others try to duplicate your problem, they may do something slightly different and end up with different results.
A note about attachments
You may only attach one file to each message. Attachment file size is limited to 2MB. If you need to include several files, you may do so by zipping them into a single archive.
If you forgot to attach your files to your post, please do NOT create a new thread. Instead, reply to your original message and attach the file there.
When attaching screen shots, it is best to attach an image file (.BMP, .JPG, .GIF, .PNG, etc.) or a zip file of several images, as opposed to a Word document containing the screen shots. Because Word documents are prone to viruses, many message board users will not open your Word file, therefore limiting their ability to help you.
Similarly, if you are uploading a zipped archive, you should simply create a .ZIP file and not a self-extracting .EXE as many users will not run your EXE file.
- Be professional in your conduct
- Be kind to others
- Be constructive when giving feedback
- Be open to new ideas and suggestions
- Stay on topic
Be sure all comments and threads you post are respectful. Posts that contain any of the following content will be considered a violation of your agreement as a member of the Alpha Software Forum Community and will be moderated:
- Spam.
- Vulgar language.
- Quotes from private conversations without permission, including pricing and other sales related discussions.
- Personal attacks, insults, or subtle put-downs.
- Harassment, bullying, threatening, mocking, shaming, or deriding anyone.
- Sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, ableist, or otherwise discriminatory jokes and language.
- Sexually explicit or violent material, links, or language.
- Pirated, hacked, or copyright-infringing material.
- Encouraging of others to engage in the above behaviors.
If a thread or post is found to contain any of the content outlined above, a moderator may choose to take one of the following actions:
- Remove the Post or Thread - the content is removed from the forum.
- Place the User in Moderation - all posts and new threads must be approved by a moderator before they are posted.
- Temporarily Ban the User - user is banned from forum for a period of time.
- Permanently Ban the User - user is permanently banned from the forum.
Moderators may also rename posts and threads if they are too generic or do not property reflect the content.
Moderators may move threads if they have been posted in the incorrect forum.
Threads/Posts questioning specific moderator decisions or actions (such as "why was a user banned?") are not allowed and will be removed.
The owners of Alpha Software Corporation (Forum Owner) reserve the right to remove, edit, move, or close any thread for any reason; or ban any forum member without notice, reason, or explanation.
Community members are encouraged to click the "Report Post" icon in the lower left of a given post if they feel the post is in violation of the rules. This will alert the Moderators to take a look.
Alpha Software Corporation may amend the guidelines from time to time and may also vary the procedures it sets out where appropriate in a particular case. Your agreement to comply with the guidelines will be deemed agreement to any changes to it.
Bonus TIPS for Successful Posting
Try a Search First
It is highly recommended that a Search be done on your topic before posting, as many questions have been answered in prior posts. As with any search engine, the shorter the search term, the more "hits" will be returned, but the more specific the search term is, the greater the relevance of those "hits". Searching for "table" might well return every message on the board while "tablesum" would greatly restrict the number of messages returned.
When you do post
First, make sure you are posting your question in the correct forum. For example, if you post an issue regarding Desktop applications on the Mobile & Browser Applications board , not only will your question not be seen by the appropriate audience, it may also be removed or relocated.
The more detail you provide about your problem or question, the more likely someone is to understand your request and be able to help. A sample database with a minimum of records (and its support files, zipped together) will make it much easier to diagnose issues with your application. Screen shots of error messages are especially helpful.
When explaining how to reproduce your problem, please be as detailed as possible. Describe every step, click-by-click and keypress-by-keypress. Otherwise when others try to duplicate your problem, they may do something slightly different and end up with different results.
A note about attachments
You may only attach one file to each message. Attachment file size is limited to 2MB. If you need to include several files, you may do so by zipping them into a single archive.
If you forgot to attach your files to your post, please do NOT create a new thread. Instead, reply to your original message and attach the file there.
When attaching screen shots, it is best to attach an image file (.BMP, .JPG, .GIF, .PNG, etc.) or a zip file of several images, as opposed to a Word document containing the screen shots. Because Word documents are prone to viruses, many message board users will not open your Word file, therefore limiting their ability to help you.
Similarly, if you are uploading a zipped archive, you should simply create a .ZIP file and not a self-extracting .EXE as many users will not run your EXE file.
See more
See less
File formats for Image Reference
Collapse
X
-
Re: File formats for Image Reference
Unless I am missing something, why not just include the path and file names in a character field in the table, and create a button on a browse or form to open the image in the default viewer.
On a form, you could have a button with this code on the OnPush event:
t=table.current()
vc_filename = t.image_filename
sys_open(vc_filename)
That should do the trick.
Hope this helps.
Jay
-
Re: File formats for Image Reference
Thks Jay!
Your method only allow for one particular file to be opened. I am trying to build a document management system with A5 with the image files stored in a file server (to overcome the table size limit of A5) and the indexes i.e. other data on the records stored in the A5 database. For example, for every record along with the .tiff image (a scanned document), I will have a author name, case number and compensation fields which can be used to locate the image through the search function. I think using the Image File Reference is the way to go but the file formats are of limited use as tiff and pdf are especially popular.
Maybe someone who has built a document management system or a record management system using A5 will be able to lead the way.sigpic
Charles TAN
We have smart clients because we work hard for them.
Comment
-
Re: File formats for Image Reference
Charles,
With all due respect, I beg to differ with you.
I have created a document management system which names PDF files with a prefix (Q for Quote, D for Drawing, etc.), the customer number, and a suffix for each document for a client.
So the client can have the following PDF files:
Q-12345-1.pdf
Q-12345-2.pdf
J-12345-1.pdf
J-12345-2.pdf
J-12345-3.pdf
You can then open any or all documents, Quotes and/or Jobs for a particular customer.
I hope this helps.
Jay
Comment
-
Re: File formats for Image Reference
I think I understand now - you want to use the Image File Reference rather than a link because you want to VIEW the document on the screen after you do your search, not click a link to Open the document? Is this correct?
Sounds like you want to reproduce a common feature of document scanning software; to include meta data along with the scanned image so you can call up the image/PDF by searching through the meta data.
Did you want this as a Desktop or a Web application (you've posted similar question in several places).
Comment
-
Re: File formats for Image Reference
Charles... this can get you a bit of the way...
There's a supercontrol - PDFViewer that you can use in A5. For tiff it sounds like an A5 solution isn't there.
Lots of 3rd party Activex controls out there... I'm using ImagXpress and THBImage controls to work with images. I find the Image Reference field far too slow to work with for viewing images.
What you could do is drop a couple of controls on a form for viewing, place then over top each other and size them the same. The PDFViewer and whatever other control you want to use. Then hide and unhide the control for the type of file you want to view.
Comment
-
Re: File formats for Image Reference
Charles
I use multi page tif's all the time in a membership system where the paper application form is scanned and saved in a folder below the main data folder. Each form is named with the same UID as the actual member. In the table I have a character field which contains the full path and file name which is updated by an operation:
a5.get_path()+chr(92)+"forms"+chr(92)+alltrim(UID)+".tif"
On a form I have a button which opens the image using Irfanview (with the file associations on the pc set for this)
This solution is not without it's problems but generally speaking it works and works well.
Comment
-
Re: File formats for Image Reference
Charles,
How about converting the images? This is very easy to automate, I do this with IrfanView and I have negotiated developer licensing so I include it with my app. I am not sure if this would solve your problem, particularly if you working with multi page Tiffs that I am not sure about. But if all you need is Thumbnail or an image for preview then perhaps convert to JPG, you can set the parameters effecting file size also.
Comment
-
Re: File formats for Image Reference
Charles,
How about converting the images? I do this with IrfanView and I have negotiated developer licensing so I include it with my app. This is very easy to automate with a command line mode where no window opens. I am not sure if this would solve your problem, particularly if you working with multi page Tiffs that I am not sure about. But if all you need is Thumbnail or an image for preview then perhaps convert to JPG, you can set the parameters effecting file size also.
Comment
-
Re: File formats for Image Reference
Originally posted by Steve Wood View PostI think I understand now - you want to use the Image File Reference rather than a link because you want to VIEW the document on the screen after you do your search, not click a link to Open the document? Is this correct?
Sounds like you want to reproduce a common feature of document scanning software; to include meta data along with the scanned image so you can call up the image/PDF by searching through the meta data.
Did you want this as a Desktop or a Web application (you've posted similar question in several places).
You are right in your understanding. The metada in this case will be other fields in the records. It will be both a desktop and a web applications. Hv you done a similar project?
I posted the requests in several places I wasnt't sure where to find the relevant experts. This is first time, I posted a request. It does looks silly to me now. I am sorry about.sigpic
Charles TAN
We have smart clients because we work hard for them.
Comment
-
Re: File formats for Image Reference
If you just want to extract a thumbnail that is embedded in those files' metadata, check out http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/
You could have one file/text field and one jpeg field, so when someone uploads the PDF or whatever, you run a command on exiftool from Alpha5 to extract the thumbnail and store it in the jpeg field.
Comment
-
Re: File formats for Image Reference
Originally posted by [email protected] View PostThks Jay!
Your method only allow for one particular file to be opened. I am trying to build a document management system with A5 with the image files stored in a file server (to overcome the table size limit of A5) and the indexes i.e. other data on the records stored in the A5 database. For example, for every record along with the .tiff image (a scanned document), I will have a author name, case number and compensation fields which can be used to locate the image through the search function. I think using the Image File Reference is the way to go but the file formats are of limited use as tiff and pdf are especially popular.
Maybe someone who has built a document management system or a record management system using A5 will be able to lead the way.
look here - http://www.dmsi-south.com/images/DMSIDOCCATALOG.PDF
Comment
-
Re: File formats for Image Reference
Have a look at this sample I posted elsewhere... it may have what you're looking for.
"ui_get_file" can set a default dir and filetype.
https://forum.alphasoftware.com/foru...4&d=1240591439
Comment
Comment