Inmagic Knowledgebase

Support and Compatibility Statement for PDF files July 7, 2009

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 21:25:13 GMT

Inmagic�DB/TextWorks Support and Compatibility Statement for PDF files July 7, 2009

Inmagic�DB/TextWorks’ imaging capability enables the display of PDF files within DB/TextWorks. PDF is a document format made popular by Abode and is now an ISO standard. In the past PDF files were largely produced by Adobe Acrobat, and were consistently uniform and of high quality. However, since PDF became an ISO standard, PDF files are now produced by a wide variety of products, applications and hardware, ranging from print plug-ins for Microsoft Word to office copier machines. The explosion of products producing PDF files has introduced a wide range of quality among PDF files, and, unfortunately, PDF files produced by non-Adobe solutions are often lower quality and may not display accurately or consistently within DB/TextWorks.

DB/TextWorks is regularly updated to keep pace with changes and updates to “newer” versions of popular image formats (including PDF). Inmagic tracks updates to the Adobe standard and to new releases of Adobe Acrobat. Updates to DB/TextWorks imaging will be made via major releases (e.g. V12) or via Service Packs between releases. However, we cannot guarantee that we will be able to read every PDF file made by every third party PDF producing application or device.

If you encounter a PDF file that does not work with DB/TextWorks, please let us know by contacting Inmagic Support. Please email the PDF file to support so we can register the file type, producing application and/or device and verify that DB/TextWorks is not properly displaying the image. If we plan or will be able to support the file in an upcoming release, we will share that information with you.

However, in circumstances where we cannot meet an immediate need to display PDF files from a specific application or device, several high quality conversion tools are available in the market and we suggest you investigate those options as an interim solution. PDF conversion tools will read a PDF and convert it to a more standard version of PDF enabling it to be utilized by a wider variety of readers and display products. Some conversion utilities work on a file by file basis, others can batch process a folder full of PDFs, and others can process thousands of PDFs in a fully automated way. Please be sure to test the output of the conversion utility you plan to use prior to investing in a solution to ensure that DB/TextWorks can read and display the PDF output.

Please note; Free or Open Source PDF conversion utilities may produce low quality output and may not resolve your problem. Please be sure to test any solution before investing time and money.

An example of a low cost PDF conversion company is inzone software (http://www.clicktoconvert.com/) they make a product called “Click to Convert.” Their Windows desktop product can batch convert PDFs quickly. They also make a server version that has an API for high volume and automated conversions. Their desktop windows version currently costs less than $100.00.

If you find other conversion utilities that you like, please let us know so we may share the information with other Inmagic clients.

Inmagic Support

Search request rejected when using character(s) ;< ;

Fri, 17 Apr 2009 18:40:45 GMT

If any of the ;< ; character sequences appears in the query string for any request, or any canned search that contains greater than or less than is blocked. The following error is returned to the user:

"Http 404 error: File not found".

So the Genie Statistics page breaks because the two of the searches for overdue loans contain < @date. (e.g. find LoanDateDue < @date NOT LoanDateReturned = *)

This is due to URLScan. URLScan is a free Microsoft addon for IIS that scans server requests and blocks potentially malicious ones. It blocks any URL that contains < or > by default see the section from the urlscan.ini below.

[DenyQueryStringSequences] ; ;
; < ; Commonly used by script injection attacks > ; Commonly used by script injection attacks

Solution:
Change the less than (<) search to use the equivalent range search syntax. For example, change this:

<inmg:Statistic Name="loans_overdue"> <Label>Overdue Loans </Label> <Textbase>Loans </Textbase> <View Report="LoanOverdueSelect">loans_report.aspx </View> <Email Type="LoansOverdue" Subject="Overdue Notice" FieldList="CatTitle.LoanCatID|LoanDateLoaned|LoanDateDue" LabelList="Title|Loan Date|Due Date">StatsOverdueEmail_0.htm </Email> <Query SortBy="BorrName.LoanBorrID">find LoanDateDue < @date NOT LoanDateReturned = * </Query> <Print Report="LoanOverdueNotice">batch_print.aspx </Print> </inmg:Statistic>

To the following:

<inmg:Statistic Name="loans_overdue"> <Label>Overdue Loans </Label> <Textbase>Loans </Textbase> <View Report="LoanOverdueSelect">loans_report.aspx </View> <Email Type="LoansOverdue" Subject="Overdue Notice" FieldList="CatTitle.LoanCatID|LoanDateLoaned|LoanDateDue" LabelList="Title|Loan Date|Due Date">StatsOverdueEmail_0.htm </Email> <Query SortBy="BorrName.LoanBorrID">find LoanDateDue =1900:@date-1 NOT LoanDateReturned = * </Query> <Print Report="LoanOverdueNotice">batch_print.aspx </Print> </inmg:Statistic>

Note that the 1900 is an arbitrary year. It just needs to be before any active LoanDateDue value. 2000 would probably be sufficiently early, unless the library has an extremely lax return policy.

Genie 3.3 Book labels have semicolons appearing in call numbers that print in a column

Thu, 02 Apr 2009 19:01:28 GMT

Genie 3.3 has an issue with printed book labels. The call numbers that appear in a column have semicolons separating the elements in the call number. This can happen for any field in a label definition that uses TreatAs="WordList". Fields in MyReports.config using that attribute do NOT exhibit the same problem.

Workaround:

In MyLabels.config, find lines like this:

and add this attribute:

Separator="<br />"

so that the lines look like this:

Click the Reset button on the About Genie screen, refresh your browser and try again.

Please make a backup copy of MyLabels.config for safekeeping before you edit the file.

This problem will be addressed in a future release of Genie.

Genie 3.3 is not supported on Windows Server 2000

Wed, 25 Feb 2009 23:03:32 GMT

Genie 3.3 is not supported on Windows Server 2000.

Genie 3.30 requires .NET 3.5 SP1, which cannot be installed on Windows 2000. Therefore, Genie 3.30 is not supported on Windows 2000.

Please note that Microsoft dropped support for Windows 2000 in June 2007.