Everyone,
I apologize if this is off topic for this list!!!!!
I have an application that I need to acquire, store and merge to a pdf file a digital signature from a client. What favorite equipment do some of you use to do this.
I contacted the topaz systems support team, and they advised me their equipment produced a proprietary file type, and required me to sign a non-disclosure agreement to do what I was asking to do. I indicated I was willing to proceed, but I have not been able to get them to communicate in follow up. .... probably related to the holidays.
I will be using Centos 7.5 Desktop units to acquire the images and send the images to a Centos 7.5 server that will do the storage, and merging work. I have been able to use pdftk to merge previously obtained signatures, but I have not been able to find a piece of equipment that I can use to acquire signatures on the fly and merge them easily to a pdf form file.
Any suggestions would be appreciated!!!!
Greg Ennis
On Sun, 25 Nov 2018 10:34:13 -0600 Gregory P. Ennis wrote:
I have an application that I need to acquire, store and merge to a pdf file a digital signature from a client.
Define your workflow in more detail.
If you're still working on adding digitized images of actual physical signatures to a pdf file, then imagemagick can very likely do what you want it to do. One of its capabilities is finding an image within another image which you can then extract or otherwise manipulate.
On Sun, 25 Nov 2018 10:34:13 -0600 Gregory P. Ennis wrote:
I have an application that I need to acquire, store and merge to a pdf file a digital signature from a client.
Define your workflow in more detail.
If you're still working on adding digitized images of actual physical signatures to a pdf file, then imagemagick can very likely do what you want it to do. One of its capabilities is finding an image within another image which you can then extract or otherwise manipulate. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Frank,
Thanks for your help. I am ok with the use of pdftk in merging a digital image to a pdf file. The process that I am having problems solving now is acquiring an image 'on the fly'. There are two work flow categories of signature images that I am needing to work with. I have solved the problem with the first category but not the second. The first category relates to signature images that I can acquire from any copier/scanner and then use gimp to extract the image and then create a jpg file that I can use over and over again. The second category of image is one that has to be collected at the time of a purchase event. Using a copier/scanner for this latter process will not really work so I am looking for equipment that will acquire the image and then allow me to create a usable image to merge with the pdf form file with the use of imagemagick or pdftk.
When I researched the topaz pieces of equipment called 'signature pads' they appear to have a proprietary file type. I contacted their support services, and learned that they do have the ability to convert the image to jpg or other formats, but this requires some software that they will apparently allow the use of with a non-disclosure agreement only. There appears to be many signature pads that work with Microsoft systems. I decided to post the question here to see if I could glean how others of resolved this kind of problem with Centos linux systems.
Hope this fills in the blanks a little.
Greg
On Sun, 25 Nov 2018 12:41:16 -0600 Gregory P. Ennis wrote:
topaz pieces of equipment called 'signature pads'
So the question that you're really attempting to ask is, "How can I obtain a linux-compatible signature pad".
That's something that I've never gone looking for since the subject has never come up with the stuff that I do, but it seems to me that a signature pad is merely a small-format drawing tablet and that's a very old technology. (There was a drawing tablet available for the Commodore 64.)
So perhaps instead of looking for a "signature pad" what you really want is just a small drawing tablet like a Wacom for which linux drivers come built-in with Centos.
On Sun, 25 Nov 2018 12:41:16 -0600 Gregory P. Ennis wrote:
topaz pieces of equipment called 'signature pads'
So the question that you're really attempting to ask is, "How can I obtain a linux- compatible signature pad".
That's something that I've never gone looking for since the subject has never come up with the stuff that I do, but it seems to me that a signature pad is merely a small-format drawing tablet and that's a very old technology. (There was a drawing tablet available for the Commodore 64.)
So perhaps instead of looking for a "signature pad" what you really want is just a small drawing tablet like a Wacom for which linux drivers come built-in with Centos. ------------------------------------------------------------
Frank,
Thanks for your responses!!!!
Yes, that is what I am looking for. I can certainly use a wacom board with gimp, but I was looking for a more automated process that will be performed by end users, and was hoping that someone on the list had crossed that bridge before.
Greg
On Sun, 25 Nov 2018 16:04:23 -0600 Gregory P. Ennis wrote:
Yes, that is what I am looking for. I can certainly use a wacom board with gimp, but I was looking for a more automated process that will be performed by end users, and was hoping that someone on the list had crossed that bridge before.
Without doing a lot of research into exactly how to make this work, I suspect that you can do what you want here using a wacom tablet and something gthumb to capture the image, then a bit of bash scripting to glue what you got from that into your pdf using pdftk (since you're already doing that).
Since you don't need to actually see the image on-screen, but rather just glue it into the pdf, you might be able to pull it directly from xf86-input-wacom, too.
There's something to get you started, anyway.
Date: Sun, 25 Nov 2018 16:26:58 -0600
On Sun, 25 Nov 2018 16:04:23 -0600 Gregory P. Ennis wrote:
Yes, that is what I am looking for. I can certainly use a wacom board with gimp, but I was looking for a more automated process that will be performed by end users, and was hoping that someone on the list had crossed that bridge before.
Without doing a lot of research into exactly how to make this work, I suspect that you can do what you want here using a wacom tablet and something gthumb to capture the image, then a bit of bash scripting to glue what you got from that into your pdf using pdftk (since you're already doing that).
Since you don't need to actually see the image on-screen, but rather just glue it into the pdf, you might be able to pull it directly from xf86-input-wacom, too.
There's something to get you started, anyway. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thanks Frank!!!!
Greg
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Frank Cox -
Gregory P. Ennis