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Making a form for data & photo collection:
A step-by-step guide to importing photos
Pendragon Forms can import photos taken with most PDA cameras such as the Treo 650 or iPAQ 6xxx. These images will be attached to the record and synchronized to your database along with your form data.
What you need
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Pendragon Forms 5.0 (the evaluation download is fine) or Pendragon Forms 4.0 with Service Pack 4
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For Palm Powered devices: A writable SD card or MMC card (Palm handhelds) or MemoryStick card (Clie handhelds) in the device expansion slot
How it works
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A simple script in the form design allows you to browse the files stored on your card or device; a selected photo is attached the photo to an Image field on the form. The photo is synchronized along with other Pendragon Forms data and stored in the data table as a long binary object.
On Palm OS devices, the photo will need to be stored on the removable media card. On Pocket PCs, the photo can be stored on the device or on a card.
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Creating a form to Manually Select and Import Photos
If you are not familiar with building and distributing a Pendragon Form, you may wish to review the Quick Start Guide for an overview.
On your form, you will need to include:
• A Button field
• A script in the Button field that attaches the new photo to an Image field in your form
• An Image field to store photos. If you would like for the image to be displayed in the record after it has been imported, select the Inline option on the Field Tab in the Form Designer.
A simple script in the Button field renames a picture taken with your camera and stored in the specified file and attaches it to the database record. This script is for a form where Field 3 is the Button field and Field 4 is the Image field.
Sample Script:
CLICK:
SELECTFILE 4 COPY
How the Script Works
This script is in a Button field. Tapping the button brings up a file selection screen on the device. The user then browses the directory and selects a file to be imported. In this script, the photo will now be in Field 3, an Image field.
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On the Handheld
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The Pocket PC (left image) shows a thumbnail of the image, making it easy to find your photo. After an image has been attached to the Forms record, the image can be viewed in the record. Palm OS devices (right image) require an extra program, JPEGlib.prc, to view .JPG images in Pendragon Forms. This file is included with Pendragon Forms. No additional files are are required to view .JPG images on a Pocket PC.
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Other Topics
Creating an Access report (for bitmap images only)
Creating an Access Report with a Photo Control (for jpeg images)
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For more information
Pendragon Forms Reference Guide: Chapter 17 Working with Images Recommended!
Using JPEG images with Pendragon Forms
PDA cameras, pictures and Pendragon Forms
(To download PDF documents, right-click on the link above and choose Save Target As...)
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