Generating Print output

When merged with a record set, the templates made in the Designer can generate print output.

Connect supports a number of different types of print outputs. These include:

• PCL (Printer Control Language)
• PDF (Portable Document Format)
• PostScript (including the VIPP and VPS variants)
• PPML (Personalized Print Markup Language)

Note: The maximum number of pages is 9999 per record for each Print section.

Print output can only be generated from the Designer when a data set is available (see Loading data). The Designer merges all sections in the Print context (see Print context) with the data set, and generates the output using those data values.

To generate Print output, select File from the menu and choose Print.

• File > Print... allows the following printing options for both Job Preset and Output Presets:
  • Using the Default output settings.
    For more details, see Print using standard print output settings
  • Using the same settings that were last used to produce printed output.
    For more details, see Print using standard print output settings
    
  • Using entirely new output settings set via the Advanced option, which allows selection from a myriad of print output options.
    

    Note: These settings cannot be saved for later re-use. To do that, one should instead create print presets, which are designed to allow just this behavior.

    For a detailed description see Print using Advanced Printer Wizard .
    
  • Using previously saved Printing Preset options.
    
  See Print Presets for more details.
  

To dynamically select a section for output, use a Control Script; see Control Scripts.

To split the Print output into several files, see Splitting printing into more than one file.

Saving printing options in Print Presets

Selecting File > New > Presets allows you to create Print Presets (which contain all the printing options), which can be saved for re-use in later print runs. This can be particularly handy when creating special print runs, that need to be run periodically.

These presets make it possible to do such things as filtering and sorting records, grouping documents and splitting the print jobs into smaller print jobs, as well as the more standard selection of printing options, such as binding, OMR markings and the like.

See Print Presets for more details.

Print settings in a template

There are a number of settings for the Print context and Print sections that have an impact on how Print sections are printed, which cannot be made in the Print Wizard or influenced through either a Job Preset or an Output Preset. They are made in and saved with the template.

These settings are:

• Duplex printing. Duplex printing has to be enabled for a Print section, in order to print that section on both sides of the paper. The same applies to Mixplex printing.
  See Enabling double-sided printing (Duplex, Mixplex).
• Finishing. The Print context , as well as each of the Print sections, can have its own Finishing settings. In printing, Finishing is the way pages are bound together after they are printed.
  See Setting the binding style for the Print context and Setting the binding style for a Print section.
  Also see Finishing options for an explanation of the Finishing options.
• Bleed. The margins around a page are called the Bleed. It can be used on some printers to ensure that no unprinted edges occur in the final trimmed document.
  See Page settings: size, margins and bleed.
• Black overprint. The option to print small black text over other colors is referred to as black overprint. See Overprint and black overprint.

Aborting content creation

You may want the content creation process to be aborted in certain situations; for example, when a template script fails to load remote content. To abort the content creation process, you may raise a fatal error from within a script in the template; see fatalError(message).

When a script calls this function in Preview mode, the script that triggers it is marked with an error icon in the Scripts pane, and the given message is displayed in a hint.

When generating output from the Designer, the Designer will log the error and display an error dialog with the given message. Content creation is aborted.