FLASH handwriting based form on Tablet PC to capture signature and other fields.

[Sachyn]

I am developing two forms in FLASH for my client and it is extremely puzzling for me to get around the following facts:

Requirement 1: to recognize signature when a form is signed in Flash and to convert it to an image and send it back to database. The back end is being done in PHP (however, i have the option of doing this in Java too). Do let me know if this can be achieved?

Requirement 2: to recognize all the fields handwritten in the form on a tablet PC and capture the data as ASCII and store in the database.

Both these requirements are in Flash and PHP is being used. Of course the other option for me to go for is JAVA. Please help me with this, my deadlines are pressing.

[Motoma]

Signature part is pretty easy, build an object that keeps track of mouse positions as x,y coordinates, and then send this data to a PHP page. The PHP page will then redraw the image using GD.

If it is being written on a tablet PC, just allow the the tablet software to convert the handwriting to text before it hits the application. Simply set up a text field, and everything should work out fine.

I am developing two forms in FLASH for my client and it is extremely puzzling for me to get around the following facts:

Requirement 1: to recognize signature when a form is signed in Flash and to convert it to an image and send it back to database. The back end is being done in PHP (however, i have the option of doing this in Java too). Do let me know if this can be achieved?

Requirement 2: to recognize all the fields handwritten in the form on a tablet PC and capture the data as ASCII and store in the database.

Both these requirements are in Flash and PHP is being used. Of course the other option for me to go for is JAVA. Please help me with this, my deadlines are pressing.

[Sachyn]

Hi Motoma,

Thanks so much for your promt reply. It will certainly help but I would like to know if I can capture this through the Flash Interface? are there any readymade components available, which I might need to alter a bit to suit my requirement. Do let me know. Thanks again.

Signature part is pretty easy, build an object that keeps track of mouse positions as x,y coordinates, and then send this data to a PHP page. The PHP page will then redraw the image using GD.

If it is being written on a tablet PC, just allow the the tablet software to convert the handwriting to text before it hits the application. Simply set up a text field, and everything should work out fine.

[Motoma]

I'm sorry, I am not sure if you are referring to the signature or the handwriting. I am going to assume you mean the handwriting, as I already gave instructions for the signature.

Handwriting/character recognition is a computationally hard problem. I am quite certain that attempting to do this is Flash would not only be difficult, but also quite slow.

Hi Motoma,

Thanks so much for your promt reply. It will certainly help but I would like to know if I can capture this through the Flash Interface? are there any readymade components available, which I might need to alter a bit to suit my requirement. Do let me know. Thanks again.

[andrewteg]

I'd love to know if anyone ever got Requirement #1 working with Flash and PHP. It seems like there would be a simple Flash and PHP solution out there to capture a signature or some similar drawing but I have not found much on the subject.

As for the ASCII reading and #2, that I understand to be very difficult so I'm just interested in looking into how #1 can be solved at the moment :)

[Motoma]

I'd love to know if anyone ever got Requirement #1 working with Flash and PHP. It seems like there would be a simple Flash and PHP solution out there to capture a signature or some similar drawing but I have not found much on the subject.

As for the ASCII reading and #2, that I understand to be very difficult so I'm just interested in looking into how #1 can be solved at the moment :)

I have personally accomplished Requirement one using Flash, PHP, and GD. There are various tutorials on making simple drawing applets using Flash; an easy way to go about doing this would be to strip down one of those and have it build an array of positions. These positions would then be POSTed to a PHP program which would rebuild the data using GD's line drawing functions.