Home

One more time we must give THANKS to our valued customers, their patience, time and suggestions has helped us to create  ATS Desktop Client a better and more stable product.

Note: As of Version 2.1.05 this problem has been fixed. We have left this page as a way to inform you how we worked through a problem.

The problem manifested itself in this manner:

1. U.S. Customs sometimes could not read the barcodes.

2. When the ATS Desktop Client printed the forms, the barcode was missing, In its place it showed text and numbers.

3. If you had saved a report in a PDF file, the receiver could not see the barcode inside the PDF.

4. Sometimes the barcode printed, sometimes it didn’t.

5. When saving a form in PDF format and then printing it, the barcode would loose it's clarity making it unreadable.

Barcode technology is tricky, there are basically two methods for implementing it.  One is to use fonts and the other is to use a Barcode Graphical Object.

We first attempted to use the font method and purchased a barcode font which was loaded and registered in the Windows Font Folder. This seemed to work great until we realized  that some anti-spyware or anti-virus programs did not allow the ATS Desktop Installer to properly register  in the Windows Registry. This caused some customers to not be able to print it.  We also discovered that in some versions of Windows XP, Microsoft has experienced problems with adding and installing new fonts.

If you suspect this is your problem, please temporarily disable your anti-spyware and/or anti-virus program prior to installing ATS Desktop Client.

Furthermore we also discovered that in our attempt to minimize the size of the PDF files being saved and emailed, we attempted to compress and not include the fonts in the PDF document, assuming that all would be well, however we also discovered two problems 1) When emailing to a customer who did not have the barcode font, it would print text and numbers instead. 2) The barcode become fuzzy and unreadable by the barcode readers.

Because of this issue, we attempted to change to something called [Barcode Graphical Objects] which are not dependent on Windows Fonts. However we discovered that there seems to be a problem in how Windows and/or Adobe PDF handles this objects.

We are currently working with the developers of Fast Report to try to find a solution to this problem.

This forced us to go back to the barcode font and attempt to solve the registry issue and problem of the recipients of the PDF emailed form who did not have the barcode font loaded.

A possible solution could be to embed (include) all fonts being used in the PDF file, but this would more than triple the size o  the PDF file you're sending.

We tested several options and with the collaboration of some of our customers, decided that the best solution was to embed only the barcode font within the PDF file and turn on a feature called "Optimized printing".

By only embedding the barcode and not all the fonts and Optimizing the printing without removing the compression we where able to accomplish our goal without tripling the size of the PDF form.

We also decided to use the barcode font inside an RTF (Rich Text File) object inside the form, which seems to be more stable than a simple text field. All this results were added inside the 2.1.05 version.

We also decided to let you control some of this features and turn them on an off at will, thereby giving you better control of the formatting of the PDF.

So in version 2.1.05 we accomplished the following goals:

* Smaller PDF files to send.
* Stabilize barcode printing of the forms.
* PDF settings in the "Configuration" menu settings which allow you to control the resultant PDF form.

These settings are:

• Compressed PDF: this options is always recommended

• Enhanced PDF: this options is  recommended when requiring a crisp clear Barcode font.

• Embed fonts: this options is unchecked by default. Our testing were successful in including the barcode but not all the other fonts.  However if your recipient's PDF form does not display right you may want to try turning this feature on and resending the PDF.

IF YOU CHECK THIS OPTION, YOU WILL SEE THE barcode INSIDE THE PDF. BUT THE RESULTANT PDF FILE WILL BE VERY BIG, which may be a real problem to send by mail on slow connections.

CHECK THIS OPTION IF YOUR CUSTOMER CAN NOT SEE THE barcode or the form is distorted. And retry to send the file.

Normally, using the new RTF based technique, The barcode WILL APPEAR, when printing, when previewing and inside the PDF file you save or send by mail.