August 2000

TIPS & TRAPS

By Lowell Rapaport

Using Color in Document Applications

In accordance with Moore's Law, both color scanning and color printing are becoming more practical and less expensive. Here's how to take advantage of color:

1. Use a color printer. Color laser printers are becoming less expensive both to buy and operate, and many of them have advanced features like variable data printing, perfect for printing short runs of forms. Just as business users took several years to learn to print with proportional fonts, there is a learning curve to making effective use of color. You can start by routinely using color for specific kinds of data like addresses or spreadsheet data.

2. Use color backgrounds. You can use different color backgrounds to identify different types of forms. An insurance company, for example, might use red forms for claims and green forms for applications.

3. Apply colored labels. This is a favorite in doctors' offices where every file has a colored label for easy identification. You can also print barcode or text labels in color.

Scanning in Color vs. Bitonal

Most bitonal production scanners have at least one color tool - a color filter or a special lamp that will selectively drop out a single color on a form. But to make full use of color - for dropping out more than one or two colors, delivering images on the Internet or just improving document legibility - you'll need a color scanner.

Color scans carry more information than monochrome scans and are therefore more readable. In theory, they can also be made at lower resolutions, but since most image processing software is designed to work at a minimum of 200 dpi, your storage and throughput needs will increase. Fortunately, computers and scanner interfaces are getting faster, and storage systems are getting larger and cheaper.

The biggest change will be in applications. Aside from image processing applications, which are being redesigned to cope with color, all the document viewing applications will have to deal with much larger color image files. This, too, may require renewed software development for bandwidth conservation. Document systems will have to deal with new color image file formats such as JBIG.

Four Ways to Use Color

Why adopt color when document imaging has always gotten along fine with monochrome imaging?

1. To drop out color. This has been a mainstay of color use in forms for years. By printing a form in a color that can be dropped out in the scan process, you simplify forms and optical mark recognition. Many bitonal scanners can drop out red or green with the aid of a special bulb or filter, but color scanners will enable drop out of just about any color or even multiple hues on the same form.

2. To automate indexing. Indexing is traditionally accomplished by manually typing in index fields, by inserting specially barcoded sheets between groups of documents or by barcoding each document. New color indexing tools let you mark documents with a highlighter to identify document types and attachments. Color highlighters can also be used to capture specific index fields.

3. To capture zones off a page. You can use highlighters to zone data, numbers, text or diagrams for different kinds of software treatment. This reduces the need to pre-program zones in your forms software and makes the identification of things like address blocks more efficient.

4. To aid forms design. When creating forms, you can also pre-zone fields to be extracted by printing the forms with colors for different zones. This gives you greater freedom in form design because the forms no longer need to conform to a predetermined structure.

Cram Course:

Network Technology At a Crossroads

If you have need of serious access to the Internet, you probably have a T1 line. T1 lines are digital connections between your LAN and your ISP. T1 lines were once the fastest and most effective way for businesses to get wired. The budget alternative was ISDN, which is essentially two telephone lines dedicated to digital communication.

T1 and ISDN lines are still the only choices for many remote locations, but they have drawbacks. They are expensive and complicated to set up. In most populated areas they now have competition from two new broadband technologies: DSL and cable modems.

DSL runs on ordinary telephone lines. It coexists with voice communications and is as much as five times faster than a T1 line. Cable modems take advantage of the huge bandwidth found on cable television lines. These new technologies are faster and cheaper than older digital lines. DSL in particular, with its speed and quality of service guaranty, is well suited for business use.

As more businesses carry out transactions on the Internet, it will become more important to have a high-speed, low-latency Internet connection. As consumers adopt DSL and cable modems businesses will be expected to match their speed as well. High-speed communication over the Internet allows businesses to send larger and more complex documents that include both human and machine-readable data.

Wireless technology complicates things further. Wireless devices like handheld computers and cell phones have tiny displays that will require new ways to view documents and forms. Documents will have to adapt to new communication technologies and new limitations on viewing and usage. Will your company be ready?