Scanning, PDF concatenation

[ignotum]

I'm starting some research into a solution and thought I'd throw out the problem here for comments... The goal is to automate what is now a HUGELY manual task.

I NEED TO CONTROL A SCANNER.

I will be scanning multiple page 2 sided documents (file format is TBD) and storing them as references in the target FMP record to a shared volume. These will be in a DOCS table related to an APPLICATION record. Environment will be networked FMP 9 on Windows XP.

I will be buying a new scanner, plug-ins and/or custom scripts can be used - no limits in that area.

I NEED A CONCATENATED PDF.

The end result is an US standard letter format multipage PDF of all of these scans, ordered appropriately, page numbered and bookmarked (according to DOCS record data). I also want to add info (Header/footer style) to the PDF pages from the FileMaker DOCS record to each page. I need to be able to generate this PDF on the fly.

I need to be able to further concatenate multiple APPLICATION specific PDFs into a packet containing the PDFs from a selected group of APPLICATIONS.

I'm in the early research stages so any input would be welcome. External applications, plug-ins etc are not a problem. The goal is to automate what is now a HUGELY manual task.

Thanks,

Mark Woytovich

(a newbie here but I've been a FileMaker developer for 14 years or so...)

[Fitch]

Seems like there used to be a couple of scanner plugins for FileMaker (one from Japan?), but all I could find was InsideScan.

[Vaughan]

I saw a large Konica-Minolta fax/copier/printer/scanner unit yesterday that is capable of scanning multiple-page documents and then automatically e-mailing the files as attachments to the user.

Might be an interesting slant on the problem, but it was a serious piece equipment and would be a large investment

[bill.caemmerer]

Hi Mark,

Interesting challenge! Have you found a viable solution?

I did a scanner-automation-to-Filemaker project many years ago -- all this info might be a bit out-of-date, but maybe it's helpful. I did my project by scripting with Userland Frontier, which is a bit more powerful than Applescript, different syntax, but similar idea; and has deep Quark Xpress functionality, which was my client's output.

Scripting a scanner isn't that difficult per se, but you'll need to account for the associated actions, eg, choosing output folders, unique filenames, references to FMPro records, and don't forget to wait for the scanner to finish. Add some error-checking to your scripts so if something goes awry, you want to limit the chaos. It took a few trial-and-error iterations to get it to really work, but eventually it did work.

A very useful utility is/was Prefab Player, which let's you script actual mouseclicks and keystrokes, so you can control non-scriptable applications.

Then your PDF requirements sound like simply printing to PDF won't do, and you'll need to script Acrobat Professional...

Or have you found products with the functionality you need?

Keep in touch, I'd love to hear how it turns out!

cheers,

-Bill