91
Overview
24
Handling fonts
Document files may contain all, some or none of the fonts that are needed to make the
document. When a font is not downloaded as part of the file for the document on view,
EscapeE will attempt to match the requested font to one in its resident library
.
EscapeE is delivered with a set of definitions which make use of standard Windows
®
fonts
such as Arial, Times New Roman and Courier New. These are in a file called
WINFONTS.FIF, but if you save fonts to the resident font library, a file is created which is
specific to your system (called RESIDENT.FIF in the PCL
®
Resident Font Library). If there
is no exact match with any of the library fonts then the nearest one is chosen, which
may result in a some variation in the appearance of the text, see Viewing font information
.
The demonstration version of EscapeE is supplied with a set of fonts
that simulate the
printer's Courier, Letter Gothic, Univers and Line-printer fonts and also uses the standard
Windows fonts Arial, Times New Roman, Symbol and Wingdings from your system. If you
find that the appearance of the fixed pitch fonts is not acceptable then you can
purchase a font pack
from RedTitan
®
by emailing help@redtitan.com
. The standard
Windows (19U) symbol set is provided, together with the PC symbol set for the standard
fixed pitch fonts (10U). EscapeE can create most other symbol sets from the 19U set by
remapping.
For matching the built-in fonts on printers such as the HP4 and later models, there is a
TrueType font pack
available for purchase and customized fonts can be supplied to
order from RedTitan.
A message on the toolbar will alert you to any problems with font mismatching; see
Missing fonts
. You can see the text that uses any fonts that were not completely
matched against available downloaded or library fonts by ticking the Show selected fonts
in red
option. (If the text of a substitute font is actually red, this option defaults to
blue instead.) You can view details of the font, and whether it is a substitute, by right-
clicking the text.
If you have problems reading a file after export, it may be because the download fonts
were created in a different symbol set
when the PCL file was generated. For example,
some HP3 printer drivers shift the characters when creating the download fonts, and an
IBM
®
mainframe could create EBCDIC fonts. You can try reading the file into EscapeE
again and selecting a different symbolset from the 'Symbolset conversion' list. In addition,
character recognition codes may be set up using
EEfonts
, accessible from 'Fonts' menu.
Some printer drivers specify inappropriate point sizes, which can cause problems if font
substitution or character recognition are required. EscapeE has an option (Calculate
download font characteristics
) that enables more appropriate values for point size,
weight and style to be applied instead.
As an alternative to including all the fonts for a PCL page with each page file, you may
opt to export all the fonts for a multi-page job in a separate file
. The fonts-file may be
installed in the Resident font library, supplied as the first of a list of files, or specified as
a header file
. This reduces the size of each page file while ensuring that the printer
has all the fonts it needs for the job right from the start.
Users may reset the font and image library
search paths.
Links
Viewing font information
Font tables
Installing fonts
About symbol sets
Changing font and image libraries
50
35
255
46
46
222
35
48
90
129
170
48
35
50
46
48
48
80
25
Overview
Navigating around
You can scroll through the pages of the job or move straight to the first or last page.
The Toolbar shows which page of the output is on view, and when viewing macros,
presents them as a drop-down list for selection. Details about the page, such as whether
it is the front or back of a sheet, orientation, etc, are displayed in the status bar.
The Search options let you locate a specified page number or string of text on a page.
The Bookmark feature lets you annotate the page numbers with text to help return to
particular pages.
Links
Scrolling the document
Searching for text
Searching for a page
Using bookmarks
About printing
EscapeE PCL
®
and PDF conversion resources program can read files that have been
prepared for printing on one printer and output as files suitable for another printer, see
About exporting pages.
You may need to set up details of the printer being emulated
(see Configuring the emulation
and Emulating a plotter
) and the output printer, see
Setting the output printer's defaults.
It may also be used just to view documents, see About viewing pages.
If you just
need a paper copy of a document (or selected pages from the document) on view, you
may use your regular printer (i.e. one set up under the Windows
®
mechanism) to print it:
see Printing.
To change the default printer, see Printer Setup.
You may also use
PCL, PDF, PS and XPS printers directly, bypassing the printer's own print-driver (print-
drivers are often the root of printing difficulties), see Direct printing.
You may choose to print pages according to their instructions or as an image, see Page
imaging and scaling.
When printing a page as an image it will always look the same as
EscapeE shows it on the screen, whereas proofing uses the printer's own
"resources" (e.g. fonts), so you can see whether these are set up correctly or not.
EscapeE can generate a separate PCL fonts-file for printers requiring the fonts to be
downloaded before the page content: see PCL export options
.
Printing may be scaled to accommodate printer differences such as unprintable areas:
see Configuring the view.
Saving and copying pages
When you have opened a PCL
®
format print file you can copy the text on the page to the
Windows
®
clipboard and paste it into other applications.
The 'Save Subset...' option allows you to cut out a section of a print file and save it for
reprinting, including any necessary fonts, macros and environment definitions. This is a
useful option when part of a PCL print run has failed; only a sample of the file need be
tested and analyzed for problems (e.g. missing fonts).
Links
Saving pages to a PCL file
Copying page contents
Exporting files manually
62
63
63
64
26
70
73
70
23
66
68
69
67
129
38
76
77
88
71
Overview
26
About exporting pages
EscapeE will export PCL
®
, PDF, PostScript
®
and AFP to a range of formats
for
archiving pages and for printing PCL jobs on other printers: PostScript, PDF, JPEG images,
TIFF images, PNG images, DICOM
images, AFP images, Xerox
®
IMG images, XPS, FDL
forms, Plain text and if you have the option installed, IPDS. PDF files may be digitally
signed, see Security options for PDF export
.
You may use EscapeE to set up data fields in the document that can be logged in a
separate file (see LOG
) in addition to the original document. The Log file is particularly
useful when dealing with large documents, e.g. for creating an index. You may export the
document only (in PDF, PostScript, TIFF, XPS, IMG, AFP, PCL format and, if you have the
option installed, IPDS), both the document and the Log file, or the Log file only (in CSV,
XML or Plain text format).
A control file may be used to combine several files (PCL, TIFF or PDF formats) into one
document. This document may be exported in the format that you choose.
Special transform options are available which allow you to call a plug-in. (For example, to
change a field to a barcode, change the font of a field, etc.) See Using plugins.
Page numbers can be added to each page of a document when exporting. This feature
allows 'Bates' numbers which have a unique prefix and a page number to be created (see
About page numbers
for more information).
Macros can be extracted from pages and saved, see Saving macros.
Pages can be
output as a macro, see PCL export options.
You can export pages manually (see Exporting files manually
), or you can set up the
program to convert files automatically whenever a new file arrives in a given folder; see
Exporting files automatically.
When exporting pages automatically you can set various
features from the 'Options | Configuration' dialog, such as the time interval to check for
files, the input and output filenames and the symbol set.
EscapeE supports TCP/IP input from a specified port and can send AFP, PCL, PDF and
PostScript output via LPR. EscapeE can also send TIFF, IMG and PNG image files via LPR
(this is especially useful for users of the RedTitan
®
'nPortal' spooler). EscapeE also can be
controlled remotely from a standard browser using the RedTitan nQ
server.
When you have set up options manually from this dialog you can save these in different
ways:
Click the Save button to retain these settings after you close the program.
Click the Save as button to save these settings to a file. (*.INI)
Click Shortcut to create a Shortcut icon which uses all the options you have set.
Expert users may set command line options, e.g. for batch operation.
Links
Setting general export options
Saving and copying pages
82
84
134
145
180
255
79
129
88
92
274
90
25
87
27
Overview
About extracting data
EscapeE allows you to mark out and define data fields on the pages and then extract
the text at these positions into a file of CSV
values with field names in the first record
or into an XML
file. These files can be imported into a database or fed to the
RedTitan
®
Dynamic Document Formatter
. You can also export the fields as plain text
.
When outputting XML, you can opt to create XSL and CSS stylesheets.
Note that in order to extract meaningful text it may be necessary to select the correct
symbolset, see To change the symbolset.
If the document was created by a driver
which assigns arbitrary codes to the characters, then it will be necessary to match the
downloaded characters to those in the character recognition database
EEfonts
.
Alternatively, when using the image export formats, data fields can be extracted
simultaneously into CSV, XML or text format. In this case the file is not given the
extension CSV, XML, etc, but a .LOG
file is created instead.
It is possible to request one log file per output file. The output can be split into several
files whenever a specified field (or tag) is encountered or when a field changes. In this
case the output file name can be derived wholly or in part from the contents of a field;
see Filenames and wild-cards
.
Data fields can be defined as being located either at an absolute position relative to the
page (see Defining fields and tags)
or at some offset relative to a 'tag'. A tag is a
special type of field that is identified by its content; it may be a text string, a graphic or
part of a graphic that is matched against items in a specified area of the page, see About
fields and tags
.
Fields may be defined to store data calculated from other fields or parts
of other
fields: these are Composite fields
. They do not need to occupy an area of a page —
they are typically used to store the results of a condition applied to another field. For
example, EscapeE can check for the presence or absence of a string
, whether a field
value has changed
, set up counters
and prompt the User to input data
.
The 'Searching'
, 'Action'
and 'Advanced'
options let you refine how the fields are
detected and used. These may force the printer to use a specific paper tray, page side
and output bin. If you are exporting proportionally spaced text into fixed pitch plain text,
EscapeE can strip or add spaces and control the way text is aligned.
Special plugins are available which allow you, for example, to change a field to a barcode,
change the font of a field, handle dynamic images etc: see Using plugins.
Page numbers can be added when exporting, see Creating page numbers.
Data extraction can be automated.
Links
Viewing data fields and tags
Editing fields and tags
Setting Log file options
Reusing data fields
186
189
187
49
90
95
155
154
197
191
202
203
199
203
161
164
166
180
150
34
158
145
169
3
Part
III
Viewing in EscapeE
74
29
Viewing in EscapeE
Viewing in EscapeE
This section describes in detail what you see in the
EscapeE window, and how to
change it.
The EscapeE shortcut icon and how to open and size EscapeE: see Running
EscapeE
.
Details on the types of files which can be viewed with EscapeE, and the auto-
recognition feature: see Opening a file
.
How to rotate the page on view: see Rotating the page
.
Choosing how much of the page to show in the window: see Choosing the view of
the page
.
Zooming in and out and setting a precise scale of view: see Changing the scale of
view
.
Specifying the usable area of the page: see Setting the page extent
.
Choosing how EscapeE should show an unprintable area: see Viewing the
unprintable area
.
How to enable/disable the display of tool hints: see Viewing 'Hints'
.
How to find and show data fields and tags in the document: see Viewing data fields
and tags
.
How to display font tables and error messages, and view the properties of the fonts
and text: see Viewing font information
.
How to view the page details; lines, graphics, mouse coordinates and macros: see
Viewing page information
.
How to customize the opening view and zoom options, shift the page contents,
show or hide the unprintable area, change the units of measurement and suppress
blank pages: see Configuring the view
.
How to view the document information notebook: see Document Properties
.
How to view the PCL
®
source text, commands, graphics and character
downloads: see Document Properties: Source code
.
How to view error messages and problem warnings: see Document Properties:
Error messages
.
How to work the log window: see Document Properties: Log
.
About Printer Job Language comments: see Document Properties: PJL
.
Links
Setting the printer defaults
30
31
32
32
33
33
34
34
34
35
37
38
40
41
41
42
43
69
42
Viewing in EscapeE
30
Running EscapeE
To run EscapeE
choose EscapeE from the RedTitan programs in your 'start' menu, or
double-click an EscapeE shortcut icon on your desktop.
To run EscapeE so that selected file(s) open automatically
choose EscapeE as your preferred program for opening specific files/extensions.
Clicking the file in Windows
®
Explorer
®
will run EscapeE with the selected file
open.
choose Run from your 'start' menu enter the file path and options on the command-
line; see Running EscapeE from the command line
drag and drop a file (or group of files) from Windows Explorer onto the EscapeE
shortcut icon on your desktop. Note that if you have set up automatic file export
with 'View' turned off, the file will simply be exported without coming up on screen;
see Setting automatic export options.
EscapeE may also be run from a program; see Running EscapeE from a program.
The EscapeE window will open at the size specified in the 'Configuration' dialog: see
Configuring the view
. You may change the size while it is running by clicking one of
the buttons at the top-right of the Title bar:
Maximize EscapeE fills the entire screen.
Restore Down shows EscapeE at a size which you can adjust to fit your
requirements: use the mouse to 'drag and drop' the window border. The Toolbar is split
into two parts, one containing menus and the other with Tool buttons. You may use the
mouse to pick up these parts by their side edges and drag them to another part of the
Toolbar (the height of the Toolbar expands/contracts automatically to fit the height of
the Tools). This is particularly useful when you run EscapeE with a narrow window; you
may keep all the Tools on view in the window by placing the menus and buttons on two
rows in a double-height toolbar.
To hide EscapeE but keep it open, click Minimize
. This places an EscapeE button on
your Start bar: click this to restore the EscapeE window.
274
211
93
213
38
Documents you may be interested
Documents you may be interested
