|
9.0 ENHANCEMENTS |
Top Previous Next |
|
UnForm 9.0 offers many significant enhancements to its already powerful predecessors. A list of major enhancements is provided below.
New Library Structure A new document archiving library structure provides faster access, keyword indexing, and faster and more robust corruption recovery. A caveat here is that existing libraries must be imported to the new format, and this version cannot share the same library files with previous versions. Library file names have changed, so it is possible to have new and old library formats share the same disk path (given enough disk space), but updates to each version's files are independent.
New Archive Browser Interface Along with the new library structure, a completely new, intuitive and modern browser interface has been implemented for archive use and management. New library structure features, such as keyword indexes, are fully utilized. Major new features of the interface include:
In addition, a private Apache web server is now used instead of the internal HTTP server provided in previous releases.
Browser-based Server Manager A server manager, used for configuring and monitoring an UnForm server, has been written in a platform-independent browser interface, bringing GUI management to all server platforms rather than just Windows.
Browser-based Design Tool The design tool has been re-implemented in a browser interface, providing faster rule file management and platform independence to the task of developing and testing rule files and rule sets. The interface can use PDF previews, or the new HTML5 output for more interactive previews.
HTML5 Driver A new output format, html5, generates stand-alone documents that can be emailed, displayed in web sites, or used for any other purpose where a dynamic HTML5 document could be used. Unlike the legacy "html" format, this new format supports the standard page formatting techniques of the mainstream PDF, PCL, and PostScript drivers. Documents generated using this format are highly customizable, by including user-defined javascript and HTML insertions, so it becomes possible to add things like input forms, or web services maps and directions, and so on.
Overlay Command Use PDF documents as overlays for PDF, PCL, or Postscript output, with the new overlay command. This is a significant improvement over the existing "attach" command, as one input format works for all output formats, and page selection is supported as well.
Scheduled Jobs A new feature called "Scheduled Jobs" enables automated execution of jobs at intervals of every minute to once a year. Jobs are configured using the Server Manager. Any rule set that can operate without print stream input can be configured.
Barcode Enhancements A new library has been licensed (from TEC-IT) to support advanced barcode functionality without requiring a Windows Support Server. New server-supported features include rotation, human-readable, error correction, several 2D barcodes (including QR and MicroPDF), and barcode linking.
More Flexible Rule Set Structure The divisions between code block sections and UnForm command sections is blurred, with support for most UnForm commands inside code blocks, and for full, dynamic conditional logic (via standard 'if expression' logic) outside of code blocks. For example, this works in 9.0, but would cause syntax errors in previous versions:
prepage{ if firm$="01" then image 1,1.5,10,8,"acmecorp.jpg" text 12,1.25,"Acme Corporation",univers,14,bold end if }
The exact same code would work outside a code block, assuming firm$ was assigned in prejob, prepage, or precopy.
Also, in 9.0 you can specify an expression inside an exec() function. Before this release, you need to resolve expressions into literal text for the exec function. This now works:
cmd$="text 1,1,{trim(get(1,1,20))},cgtimes,8,bold" exec(cmd$)
Code block 'if' statements no longer require a colon to indicate multi-line syntax.
These changes simplify one of the more complex aspects of UnForm rule set writing.
Mailreader, mailsender, mailmessage, mailattachment objects Object oriented email support for reading and parsing email messages from POP accounts, in addition to new object oriented functionality for sending email.
A powerful, customizable facility for programmatic access to document archive features, such as document retrieval, searches, and more, available to any programming environment that can work with an HTTP server.
SSL and Compression The client and server now use zlib compression when transferring large blocks of data, to speed up job submission and retrieval over slower network connections. Also, SSL can be configured to encrypt client-server communication to secure traffic over open connections. This is especially important if UnForm is hosted on public cloud servers.
Logs by Date Instead of server logs that continue to grow as long as the server runs, logs are now date-oriented, and auto purged on a configurable cycle. Different logs are provided in a consolidated directory, depending on activity (server, delivery, scanning) in CSV format, plus standard Apache web server logs are provided. Also, logdetail settings are distinguished between server and job activity.
Image Manager PDF-based OCR The Image Manager can now import PDF files that contain a text layer and treat that text as OCR data. This is a common format for third-party OCR products, which can create PDF files with a scanned image on each page, but with the OCR'd text underneath, available for clipboard operations, or in the case of UnForm, for text extraction. The provides an alternative to MODI, where the user may choose any OCR product that can produce image/text PDF files.
This feature utilizes Ghostscript or MuPDF for text extraction, then uses the server's AFO technology to construct word positions from character data.
Deliver Enhancements The deliver command now supports an extensible configuration that allows for new functionality, such as publishing documents to file systems, web servers, cloud services, and more. In addition, asynchronous delivery has been added, where files and associated tags are queued for delivery, with automatic retry logic and dynamic tag correction support.
LDAP/Active Directory Support User maintenance now supports a Sync feature to synchronize users and groups with an LDAP (or Active Directory, which uses the LDAP protocol) server. Non-LDAP users are still supported, as well as the various UnForm-specific user properties (i.e. Design tool or Workflow access). Users that are synchronized from LDAP are authenticated via LDAP as well, so their passwords are not maintained in the UnForm user database.
Additional Minor Enhancements
|