OL Connect Release Notes 2018.2.1

Overview

This document provides an overview of the new features and enhancements in OL Connect 2018.2.1 , as well as some important installation information.

Installing OL Connect

  • OL Connect is released as a 64 Bit version only.
  • Full details on installing and licensing OL Connect can be found in the online help, which can be accessed from the software and the installer.
  • Note that the software comes with a 30 day trial license by default.

Upgrading from OL Connect 1.7

It is highly recommended that you update the Objectif Lune Update Client before upgrading OL Connect from version 1.7 to version 2018.2.

If you do not update the Update Client, an unexpected error might occur whilst updating Connect. This error does not prevent the successful upgrade of Connect to 2018.2, even though it appears as if it might have. To avoid potential confusion, we recommend that you first update the Objectif Lune Update Client before attempting to upgrade Connect from version 1.7.

The Update Client will show that there is an update available for itself. Simply click on the download button in the dialog to install the new version of the Update Client. Note that it is no problem to run the update while the Client itself is still open. It automatically updates itself.

Connect 2018.2.1 Enhancements/Fixes

Backwards Compatibility Issues

Connect 2018.2 introduced some issues which have now been addressed in 2018.2.1. These issues were:

  • External sort metadata fields were not being catered for properly in the metadata validation code in the Output Preset and Print Wizards. (SHARED-67687)
  • Fixed a problem affecting scripted Section configurations containing different scripted values for different records. The merge engine would sometimes use previously applied scripted values. (SHARED-67699)
  • Fixed a problem with cloning template Sections that did not successfully clone all fields. (SHARED-67702)

Connect 2018.2 Enhancements

Sassy CSS

OL Connect 2018.2 introduces Sass CSS preprocessor functionality to the Designer. (SHARED-64625)

Sass (Syntactically Awesome Style Sheets) is an extension of CSS that enables you to use things like variables, nested rules, inline imports and more.

Maintenance of CSS styles for templates requiring many different style rules can become a tedious undertaking. Stylesheets files keep getting larger and more complex and thus harder to maintain. Some common challenges include:

  • How to group/organize rules that belong together? (e.g. styles for an address block, footer or dynamic table)
  • How to update a color value or font family across multiple rules and even across stylesheet files?

A CSS preprocessor like Sass solves these problems and helps you write maintainable code.

In Connect Designer options have been added to the Stylesheets folder to create and compile Sass files (.scss file written using Sass 3 syntax). For more information on the Sass language see: www.sass-lang.com.

Compiling a .scss file outputs a normal CSS stylesheet file which is automatically linked to the current section.

Alternatively use drag and drop to link the result to other sections or use the Includes dialog of a specific section.

Dynamic Sheet Configuration Settings

A common requirement for dynamic print templates is the ability to switch between simplex and duplex. Typically this is solved by duplicating a Print Section, enabling Duplex in the Sheet Configuration dialog and then switching between the simplex and duplex sections by Control Script (or through the Conditional Print Section wizard).

In Connect 2018.2 new scripting commands have been added to dynamically set Sheet Configuration options from within a Control Script. This allows you to set the Duplex mode dynamically, or do things such as applying a different Master Pages based upon the data, or omitting empty sides from the last sheet, or single sheets.

The following Control Script sample enables Duplex mode for "Section 1":
let section = merge.template.contexts.PRINT.sections["Section 1"];
section.sheetConfig.duplex = true;

The following snippet sets the media and the master pages for the all sheet postions of "Section 1":
let section = merge.template.contexts.PRINT.sections["Section 1"];
section.sheetConfig.positions.all.media = "My Media";
section.sheetConfig.positions.all.allowContent = AllowContent.ALL_SIDES;
section.sheetConfig.positions.all.masterFront = "My Master Page";
section.sheetConfig.positions.all.masterBack = null;

Performance Improvements

  • Job Creation: Improved job creation speeds. This is particularly the case with any job creation that involves any processing, including filtering, grouping or sorting. (SHARED-50328)
  • Output: Improved memory handling, leading to even better stability.

Installer Improvements

  • Support added for using non-Latin-alphabet characters in the User Name for connecting to external databases. This applies to both the Setup and the Designer Preferences dialog. (SHARED-65243)
  • Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime now only installed when really required. (SHARED-63909)
  • Several third party libraries have been updated. (SHARED-57163)
  • A warning is now displayed if the Windows Management Instrumentation service is not enabled and started. (SHARED-61548)
  • Installer now logs more helpful messages when failing to connect to an existing MySQL server. (SHARED-62836)

Logging Improvements

  • Improved error/warning logging in Live mode. (SHARED-49046)
  • Extra preferences added to allow greater control over logging levels. (SHARED-63923)
    One change is the introduction of an option to set the Overall Logging Level. By default the logging level is set at the midpoint of Info, but it can be set higher to include more logging (All, Trace, Debug) or lower to reduce the logging (Warning, Error).
    NOTE: Higher logging settings will have an impact upon Connect production speeds, as well as leading to substantially larger log files.

  • We have also introduced Advanced Logging preferences. The Advanced settings over-ride the Overall logging settings, and provide a greater level of logging granularity. The Advanced Log Settings should only be set in conjunction with advice from OL support, to ensure that only the most relevant settings are set to the higher logging levels.

  • The logging format default has changed from dd MMM yyyy (31 May 2018) to yyyy-MM-dd (2018-05-31) to make it easier to sort log files when using tools to merge and view multiple log files together. (SHARED-64233)
  • Connect will now log a warning message in the event that there are insufficient engines currently available for a specific job, leading to the scheduler having to wait. (SHARED-61642)
  • The location of the logging configuration file has moved from the Users directory to ProgramData to restrict the configuration to a per-machine basis. (SHARED-64147)
  • Should a fatal error occur in the Java Virtual Machine running Connect the logs generated are now controlled and will appear in "C:\ProgramData\Objectif Lune\OL Connect\ErrorLogs" folder. (SHARED-64597)

Connect 2018.2 Designer Updates

JSON support added to the Data Model Panel

The Designer now allows you to add JSON sample data straight into the Data Model for debugging purposes. (SHARED-61655)

This can be done via a new File menu option or from the Data Model Panel itself, using the new JSON Sample Data button.

Invoking this option launches a wizard which allows you to either select a JSON file or paste JSON data copied from a Workflow variable. When loading data from a disk file the file contents are automatically placed in the JSON editor.

If JSON sample data is active invoking the JSON Sample Data… option will show the current data allowing you to edit its structure and values.

You can also now import or export a Data Model in JSON format. (SHARED-64620)

Minimum Pages option added to Print Sections

Connect 2018.2 introduces a new section property for controlling the minimum number of pages for a Print Section. This can be used to generate pages with only absolute positioned content, simplifying workflows where the number of pages are known up front and you want to draw boxes (absolute positioned divs) on specific pages.

The property can be set when the new Template is being created or through the Print Section properties. (SHARED-10236)

Color Output option added to Print Contexts

For certain full color print jobs, it is important to be able to set black text on top of color areas to overprint. This is of particular importance for small text, because mis-registration problems are more visible with small text. To support this a new Color Output option has been added to the Print Context. (SHARED-62265)

The default encoding for the color black has also changed from RGB to CMYK. Thus the “Keep RGB black in output” option was added for backwards compatibility.

Breadcrumb Improvements

The breadcrumbs at the top of the workspace will now always end with a ~contents breadcrumb. When clicked this will select the contents of the last element rather than selecting the last element. (SHARED-17339)

Paste as Plain Text option added

Option added to paste content copied from an external editor as plain text. This ensures any unwanted formatting and invisible elements are removed. (SHARED-63025)

Scripting Improvements

  • An overview ruler has been added to the Script Editor. The ruler shows annotations concerning the entire script. These annotations are shown relative to their position in the script and do not move as the user scrolls the script source. Script errors are highlighted by a red icon, and warnings in yellow. The topmost icon will display red if any errors exist in the script at all.
    This allows you to immediately see if a script has warnings or errors and easily jump to any warning/error location by clicking on the annotations in the overview ruler. This is particularly handy when a script has many lines of code. (SHARED-64717)
  • Personalization scripts can now use the "loadtext" function to load text content from files. (SHARED-61512)
  • Option added to Scripting Preferences to set whether expanded scripts use single or double quotes. (SHARED-60370)
  • Scripts can now conditionally trigger a fatal error by calling the new fatalError(message) function. This will abort content creation. (SHARED-64789)
  • Scripts in Print Context jobs can now attach arbitrary properties to content items generated by Content Creation. The properties are retained in the database, allowing the information to be utilized in Workflow for further processing along with the base record information when retrieved by the Retrieve Items action. (SHARED-65239)
  • Introduced "width" and "height" script functions with the same behaviour as jQuery's "outerWidth" and "outerHeight". (SHARED-65513)
  • Fixed an issue whereby the resource() function did not work properly when passing a UNC path. (SHARED-65523)

Post Pagination Improvements

  • We have introduced a new Post Pagination script type, and have updated the Scripts panel so that it now groups scripts by type. The groups are Control, Standard (which contains any pre-existing scripts) and Post Pagination. (SHARED-64634)
    These script types are grouped to emphasize their execution order. Control scripts are executed before the merge process and therefore run before the Standard and Pagination scripts.
  • Several new script functions have been introduced for use with the new Post Pagination scripts. Scripts can now access elements in any section as well as retrieve information that is only available after pagination. This will allow for the creation of post content elements like a Table of Contents. (SHARED-64637)
  • Margins for Sections and Master Pages are now scriptable, through the new margins object. (SHARED-62173)
  • The sheet configuration of a Print Section is now scriptable, via the new sheetConfig object. (SHARED-63061)

Barcode Improvements

  • Added human readable text and checksum controls to Royal Mail 4 State barcodes. (SHARED-47422)
  • Added support for Grayscale “Colors”. (SHARED-50614)

Business Graphics Improvements

  • Color picker options added throughout the Chart Properties dialog. (SHARED-62564)
  • The "Values (y)" table in both the Insert Graph Wizard and the Graph Script dialog can now be filtered to show only numeric fields. This will then limit the display to only Integer, Float and Currency fields in the Data Model. (SHARED-64875)

General Designer Improvements

  • Download Remote Resources (CSS stylesheets, JavaScript files, JSON and HTML snippets) to your template through a new context menu in the Resources view. This allows you to keep a link to a centralized file but quickly download a copy to your template without having to separately copy and paste.(SHARED-58949)
  • New Media now defaults to the same paper size as the current Print Section. (SHARED-34012)
  • Added an "Omit Master Page Back in case of an empty back page" option when configuring all sheets at once in the Print Section Properties. (SHARED-56383)
  • Media Properties dialog behaviour improved. When any of the media in the Resources tree properties are changed, the "Page Setup" button gets activated and Designer prompts to save the media properties changes. (SHARED-62353)
  • Disabled irrelevant menu items in the View menu when a Snippet editor is active. (SHARED-62816)
  • When selecting content in the main editor, and selecting the context menu option of Create Shared Content or Create Snippet, you are now presented with a dialog in which to specify the name of the snippet resource. (SHARED-63217)
  • Improved support for editing shorthand !important rules in the Edit Rule dialog. (SHARED-62863)
  • Preflight: If a fatal error occurs during Data Mapping, the reported error will now also include the current record number. (SHARED-63089)
  • Help button added to both the Profile Scripts and Preflight dialogs. (SHARED-63091)
  • Template Wizard file comboboxes now add "Empty" value if not set. (SHARED-63294)
  • Improved behaviour for when the Auto Save directory no longer exists. (SHARED-64428)
  • Improved the way Create Snippet and Create Shared Content work. Creating a snippet for a selection of multiple elements in the Outline pane now creates a single snippet containing all the elements. (SHARED-64445)
  • Improve support for UNC paths in Remote CSS. Connect now attempts to auto-correct UNC paths with the incorrect number of slashes. (SHARED-65308)
  • Zoom options improved. (SHARED-64880/61294/61296)
  • Apply button added to the Stylesheet New Rule dialog. (SHARED-60852)
  • Fixed an issue whereby formatting could be lost after invoking undo or redo when the source tab is active. (SHARED-64734)

Connect 2018.2 Output updates

Important Information

The Output Engine (Weaver) memory footprint has increased in Connect 2018.2. This means some users might need to increase their Weaver memory allocation in the Engine Setup preferences.

Note: When running really large jobs, it often pays to increase Weaver memory allocation, even if only for the duration of the production job(s).

Font handling

  • Additional Content Text improvements
    When adding text as Additional Content in Output Presets, TrueType Collections (TTC) font files were not supported. TTC fonts allow a single file to hold multiple fonts types. Since TTC fonts can be important for Asian language fonts, we have now added support for these.

    Previously, Additional Content text allowed selecting Bold and Italic for any font, even if the bold or italic version was not present. We now only display the font variation options for a font, if that font variation is actually available.

  • PDF Output font selection
    Added selection for either simple mixed byte font encoding (for smaller size) or fixed 2 byte CID fonts with identity encoding (for greatest compatibility) for PDF output. (SHARED-65462)

    Connect always used simple fonts in its output, but dynamically switched to composite fonts when the number of characters in a font grew too large. This approach best reduced output file size. But in some cases the dynamic font creation caused viewing issues with certain PDF viewers, even though the font method is compliant with PDF standards.

    To accommodate such, we have provided an alternative font creation method which always creates CID fonts with identity encoding. This results in larger output files, but provides better compatibility with PDF viewers.

    When generating PDF for non-Western languages, this new option may be the recommended choice.

  • Asian language PDF output made smaller through improved glyph handling. (SHARED-63549)
  • Further improvements made in handling simulated style fonts for OTF fonts. (SHARED-65402)
  • Fixed an issue with output of TrueType font encoding information that could cause special characters to be missing or incorrectly substituted. (SHARED-62332)
  • When a TrueType font "glyph count" information is incorrect Connect will now attempt to continue processing, rather than immediately throwing an exception. (SHARED-64382)

Email Output Improvements

  • Meta information added to the Email Section Properties
    This allows viewpoint meta information to be added and configured in the email. This meta information will not be visible to the receiver, but can have an effect on how the email is represented in the email client. (SHARED-64761)
  • Email Script dialog improvements
    The email Script dialogs have been streamlined and simplified.
    Improvements were made to the To, CC, BCC, Reply-To, From, Subject and PDF Password email scripts. (SHARED-61005)
  • Improved support for graphs in emails
    As email clients don't usually support SVG images, graphs added to an email context are now rasterized by default. There is also a preflight message for emails containing graphs set without rasterize options. (SHARED-60546)

Print Output Improvements

  • AFP output speed improvement for image intensive jobs containing lots of pages. (SHARED-55831)
  • If a template containing linked annotations (either URL links or email links) was printed to PDF as PDF/A-1b, PDF/X4 or PDF/VT, the resulting output file was not compliant to the specified conformance level. This has been fixed. (SHARED-61714)
  • We introduced a way to create custom TLE and NOP records in AFP output, through a custom printer definition. These records can have variable content, and they can be created conditionally. At the moment there is no GUI option to create these custom records and their rules, but this is intended for a future version. (SHARED-65527)
  • In PDF/A-1b, PDF/X4 and PDF/VT output the document title in the PDF metadata is now derived from the template name, rather than the full path of the output file name. (SHARED-61168)

General Output Improvements

  • Output engine now warns instead of crashing if it encounters text with a non-invertible transformation matrix (such as a zero point size). (SHARED-59744)
  • Output engine now logs a warning if an image in an encrypted PDF file cannot pass-through untouched. (SHARED-59802)
  • Fixed uncontrolled appearance of optional content (such as virtual stationery) in documents that are processed by the transparency flattener. (SHARED-60923)
  • Fixed handling of output paths with one or more dollar signs ($) in them, such as certain network shares. (SHARED-63872)

  • Several miscellaneous improvements to memory management.

Print Wizard and Preset Wizard Improvements

Size grouping

The ability to group documents by their size has been extended. In addition to grouping documents, you can now also group document sets and job segments by the number of pages. And instead of just using the page count, it is also now possible to use the sheet count for the size of the documents, sets, or segments. This makes size grouping useful for jobs that might contain both simplex and duplex content. (SHARED-61192)
This was previously referred to as “page break grouping”, and is found on the same Grouping Options Wizard page.

The settings used in the screenshot above groups documents into document sets by their customer number. Size grouping then creates three different jobs segments: the first with sets of only 1 sheet, the second with sets of 2 to 5 sheets, and a third with anything of 6 sheets or greater.

In Output Creation, you could create an output file per job segment, and use ${segment.metadata.ItemSize} in the output file mask to automatically name these files appropriately.

Impositioning

We have made a number of improvements to Impositioning, both by improving usability and by adding new features. These changes led to a redesign of the layout of the imposition wizard page, with some options being moved and others renamed.

The major improvements are as follows.

Visual warning
The page layout diagram now displays in red when the selected imposition options do not fit the selected sheet.

Sample page for imposition
The imposition settings are not always meant to work with just your current template. So we have added a sample page setting that will be used for both the preview and the validation of the settings. This sample page now defaults to the size and orientation of the first section of a template, instead of its first media.

Stack by Column
Alongside the existing cut and stack impositioning order, we have introduced an imposition order that is more suited for continuous feed printing when the imposition has multiple rows. We call this new ordering “Stack by Column”, and it is very suitable for roll fed label printing.
It works like this: instead of always positioning the subsequent page on the next sheet (until the stack depth is reached), stack by column first goes to the next row down on the sheet, and then down in the stack. The effect is that if all sheets are layed out top to bottom consecutively, the impositioned pages are ordered by column. If the imposition has only 1 row, both methods are identical.

Comparison of Stack by Column and Cut and Stack with 16 duplex pages in a 2×2 imposition.
Stack by Column
(top to bottom, stack down, left to right)		 Cut and Stack
(stack down, top to bottom, left to right)

Reverse impositioning
In roll fed applications, reversing the imposition order can be very important, because, when done properly, this causes the roll output by the printer to have the first page on the outside of the roll, allowing the roll to start with the first page.

Our existing option to reverse the order of impositioning is reversing the order of the resulting imposition sheets by starting with the last side of the last sheet, and then going backwards. This effectively turns the stack up side down. It also means that, in case of duplex impositioning, all back sides become front sides and vice versa.

To have an effective way of reversing a Stack by Column imposition that leaves the “by column” order in tact, but that starts at the last pages in the job, we have added a new option to reverse the imposition, that basically reverses the incoming sheet order before impositioning. The effect is that not only is the order of the imposition sheets reversed, but the order of the pages on the sheet is also reversed.

To properly distinguish between these two ways of reversing, we have renamed our existing reverse to “Stack upside down”, and our new way of reversing is called “Inverse page order”.

Rotate imposition
In addition to our existing options of having your imposition either upright or rotated 180 degrees upside down, we can now also rotate your imposition by 90 or 270 degrees.

Selective Inserts

Selective inserts in the Inserter Mark Options page now support metadata menus for inserting metadata field names in selective insert conditions. (SHARED-61152)

New AFP Options

We have introduced a new AFP Options page, to provide greater control over AFP output. (SHARED-63234)

Connect already had the ability to add metadata properties from Job Creation as TLEs to the AFP output. However, the earlier implementation did not support creating TLEs for specific pages, or for adding TLEs at the page level (which allows different values for each page).

TLEs are often used to mark the start of documents or mail pieces, to indicate media types, locations for inserts (including the name of the insert), and other properties required for print production. To accommodate this, it is now possible to conditionally create both TLEs and NOPs in AFP output by using inserts in custom printer definitions.

In addition to this, we have also added settings to control which job elements page groups will be created in the output. Earlier Connect versions would always create page groups for all job segments, document sets and documents, which would lead to pages being nested in three levels of page groups. Now you can choose to have just one level of page groups, or even no page groups at all.

To make sure that metadata properties from Job Creation do not interfere with dynamic TLEs from the printer definition inserts, this page also has a setting to turn off TLE creation for metadata properties.

Connect 2018.2 Print Manager updates

Job Cleanup Improvements

Option added to have finished Print Manager jobs automatically deleted after a set period of time. (SHARED-62981)

General Print Manager Improvements

  • Date formats made consistent in the History tab, to assist in date searching. (SHARED-59679)
  • Text files (*.txt) are now treated the same as comma separated text files (*.csv) in Print Manager. (SHARED-64666)
  • Fixed issue with IPDS Preview of GOCA content sometimes displaying random lines across the page. (SHARED-63331)
  • Fixed issue with printer connection not always closing after querying printer capabilities. This sometimes led to failures in subsequent printer capability queries. (SHARED-64498)

Known Issues

As of OL Connect 2018.1 the Known Issues have moved from the Release Notes to the Connect online Help.

They can be found here.