[CentOS] digital signature equipment

Sun Nov 25 18:41:16 UTC 2018
Gregory P. Ennis <PoMec at PoMec.Net>

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.
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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