11.0

ABBYY FlexiCapture
Dynamic Data Capture System
© 2011 ABBYY. All rights reserved.
11
Checkmark Field
1. The recommended field sizes are 3.5x3.5 mm, 4x4 mm, 4.5x4.5 mm, or 5x5 mm (if circular checkmark fields are used, they
must fit into squares of recommended sizes).
2. The recommended line width for checkmark field borders is 0.4 mm (irrespective of the size of the field).
Text Marking
Raster dot size:
1. If the field borders are raster dots, the thickness of the raster line (i.e. the raster size) must be 0.39 pt.
2. The optimal distance between the raster dots is five times their size.
Important! The dots most likely to be glued together are dots in the corners of character cells.
Tip. If your software does not allow you to specify the distance between each raster dot, you must choose a line style which has dots
located at sufficient distance from each other to prevent them from becoming glued together on the scanned image, and from remain-
ing on the image after image despeckling, as big dots are not interpreted by the OCR system as garbage and are not removed from the
image during despeckling.
Character cell size:
1. The recommended size of character cells is 4x5 mm; the use of smaller sizes requires a
greater degree of accuracy from those completing the form, and this is very difficult to achieve. Large
character cells are also not advisable as this encourages the use of abnormally large letters. Ideally,
the character cell size should reflect the average letter size.
2. The distance between field lines should be no less than 2.5 – 3 mm, and the distance be-
tween two adjacent character cells in the same line should be no less than 1–1.2 mm.
Line thickness:
If the borders are black lines (“text in a frame”, “letters in separate frames”, or “letters in frames”),
the line thickness should be 1 pt.
Combs:
1. The recommended distance between the notches in a comb is 5 mm.
2. The distance between between the horizontal lines of two combs, when posi-
tioned one below the other, should be no less than 7.5 – 8 mm.
3. The notch height must be around 0.9 – 1.2 mm.
4. The thickness of both the notches and horizontal lines should be 1 pt.
5. If frames with a comb are used, the minimum distance between frames should
be 2.5 – 3 mm.
Element Positioning
1. Be sure to provide sufficient margins on your form. Otherwise, form elements which are located too close to the sides of the
form may disappear during scanning, which will result in a loss of data.
2. The space between neighboring form elements should not be less than 2 mm.
3. The space between a checkmark field and explanatory text should not be less than 2/3 of the checkmark field size.
4. Make sure that the explanatory text does not overlap entry field borders.
5. If explanatory text is printed in black ink, make sure there is a distance of at least 1.5–2 mm between the explanatory text
and the other elements. This distance is not so crucial for explanatory text printed in the same ink as the background.