Latest revision as of 20:12, 22 October 2013

Taking the Pictures

Picture location

This is specified in the support table SISMM. The 4th entry in this table is the location where you will store the images used for ID pictures. Note that this path must have a folder underneath it named "new".

Picture taking in CrossRoad or Wizard

When editing a student file, there is a button the the barcode/picture tab to take a picture. Clicking that invokes the helper application, which in turn should call the TWAIN interface for a camera attached to the station. Finishing that process will save the picture in the "new" folder under the picture path. The reason for this step is that these pictures are frequently in need of improvement and cropping.

There is also a "Take Picture" button in the Advisor/Instructor window, but note that it does not automatically use the "new" folder. Instead it uses the picture path as specified in that window. There is also not particular naming scheme, again using whatever is noted in the path line.

And there is a "Take Picture" button in the Employee window which works very similarly to that in the Advisor/Instructor window.

Editing

Generally the pictures need to be edited. You can use any number of programs to improve the quality of the pictures. King's uses use a freeware program called DCE (http://www.mediachance.com/digicam/enhancer.htm). Combined with an AutoHotKey program written by Keeler Services to process a whole folder of images at a time, this works pretty well. Photoshop with some extensions could also probably produce similar results.

Cropping is another issue. Very few free programs are available for this, but King's uses ASmallerImage (http://www.trivista.com/products/asmallerimage/) It is pretty cheap and allows you to specify output dimensions and work your way through a whole folder pretty easily. The images should be cropped to make portrait orientation (as opposed to the landscape orientation that most cameras take the pictures in) with the width to height ratio of 3:4.

King's currently uses Luxland FaceCrop which, while not cheap, does a good job of identifying faces and cropping to that. When that fails, ASmallerImage is used.

In the process of enhancing and cropping these images, King's use some temporary folders but ends up with the final image in the picture path specified above. That is, below the new folder there is a DCD folder. DCE Enhance saves the "improved" picture in that folder. ASmallerImage looks in that folder for its source and saves the cropped image up to levels in the normal picture path.

This process means that I need to use two batch files which basically delete the interim files. DCDT2.BAT and REMABV.BAT both simply delete any image in the temporary folders that also exists in the previous folder. This is just tidying so that the same image is not processed more than once.

Barcodes External Utility

I have a cron machine run a batch file called barc.bat. It is reproduced below:

@echo off barcodes 2007/082~ k:\groups\reg-lias\bmp\ @lab.kingsu.ca N > barerr.txt killzero barerr.txt

mail

cmdemail /I barcodes.eml

end

u: del barcodes.rpt if exist barerr.txt cmdemail /I barerr.eml

This file calls a utility named barcodes. The parameters are a tilde-delimited list of active year/terms, the source folder for the id pictures, the extension for email addresses (the unique name is stored in a file called labuser.dbf).

It does a number of things with the underlying database that is used for printing the ID cards. The primary thing that it does is to flag new or changed records for printing. When someone's name changes, or when they lose their id card and need the barcode incremented, a new card needs to be printed. This utility helps identify those. The last line of the batch file emails a report of the results.

CrossRoad IDCard report

An external report file called "STUDENT ID CARDS.RPT" must be custom developed for each institution. This has the logo, picture and placement of name etc. This is set up to print the cards 10 up on the Avery business card paper and we print them on a colour laserjet. The report can be set up to print on other layouts.

This report is accessed from the Current Students window under File | Print | Student Lists | Student ID Cards. This asks which position at which to start the report which should always be set to 1. The print preview should be sent to a colour printer with appropriate settings (at King's these are manual feed with cardstock as the paper type). Once the cards are printed you are asked whether to mark them as such. Unless a paper jam or other calamity has destroyed the output, the answer is yes.

Printing Photo Class Lists

Pictorial class lists are generated using a pair of external utilities and an external report form.

Extract Class Lists

First the class lists need to be extracted into a distinct database. This is largely to permit padding the output so that each class is on its own pages.

Usage: classlst [YearTerm] [Datadir] [GroupSize]. 15 is the normal group size

Add Residence Students

If a pictorial list of residence students is also desired, there is another utility to extract those.

REZLST [YearTerm] [DataDir]

This produces rez.lst. This should have textlines with the correct year, term, course, sli values and id values of 0 added to pad to a multiple of 15. Using DBU, append this file (as delimited) to classlst.dbf (remember classlst.ntx!). It may be desirable to split this file by building code (the first character of the room code).

Delete Excess

There may be classes that are not desirable to have in the file. DBU may be used to delete these from classlst.dbf.

ClsLstPrn

This windows based utility in c:\crossroad allows you to print the class lists. It is designed to send each class to the printer individually. Note that these files can be very large, and this may stress network printing facilities. So printing these in groups is a good idea. The lists can be printed by Course Code or in Instructor Groups.

Doing Reprints/Lost Cards

Lost Card Request

Library Completes Replace Lost Student Identification Card form, collecting the fee. CrossRoad has the number of lost cards incremented for students, or the new barcode entered for Advisors/Employees. Form is passed to whoever is printing the replacements. Requests for students are filed in student file after printing.

Reprint Request

The come from the library when they are having problems reading a card. These are given to whoever is doing the reprints. These are discarded after printing.

Back of ID

The back of ID cards usually carries information about use and loss of the card. At King's we print these with a Word document k:\groups\reg-lias\forms\id card back.doc.