• 7.1

2013-09-23

Publishing Documents

PrintShop Mail Web is an easy to use, powerful and open Web to print application that allows for printing over the Web.

PrintShop Mail Design allows to prepare and add documents to PrintShop Mail Web. PrintShop Mail Design documents are used as the basis for print jobs, meaning that it is possible to reuse the documents by uploading new databases. The designer can publish (upload) an existing or new document and customers will be able to use PrintShop Web to order print jobs based on this document. Print jobs can be previewed and validated before they are submitted to the printer.

Preparing PrintShop Mail documents for publishing

You, "the designer" create documents and templates in PrintShop Mail.

When the document is ready for publishing, you can start the upload process by clicking on Publish to Web selecting the File menu or clicking the Publish to Web button in the Standard toolbar.

You can design a document with or without linking it to a database. The variable data in the document preview in PrintShop Web will be based upon Data Fields that you assign in PrintShop Mail. For more information about data fields, see Data Field Properties and the Data Fields Panel.

Publishing documents to PrintShop Mail Web

Before publishing your document, you must first ensure that the link between PrintShop Mail Design and PrintShop Mail Web is established and working.

To set the PrintShop Mail Web Connection

1. Click on the Edit menu
2. Click on Preferences
3. Click the PrintShop Mail Web icon.
4. Enter the URL, Username and Password for PrintShop Mail Web (see PrintShop Mail Web Settings).
5. Verify the information by clicking on Test Connection.

If no PrintShop Web Server address has been defined in the PrintShop Mail Preferences, the document and its attributes (images and fonts) will be saved in a zip archive (Publish to zip) for later publishing.

To publish your document to PrintShop Mail Web

1. Click on the File menu.

2. Click Publish to Web... . The Publish to Web dialog appears.
3. Fill in the information in this dialog:
   • Name: Enter a name for this document. If the name already exists on PrintShop Mail Web in the same company and publication type, the document will be overwritten with the one you upload.
   • Printer: Select a printer on the PrintShop Mail Web server on which this document is setup to print.
   • Operator Instructions: Type in any special instructions to the operator that will print the job. For example, this can be instructions to cut & stack or post-printing finishing touches.
   • Publication Type: This is the publication type as defined in the PrintShop Mail Web server. Publication types contain one or more document and are part of a company. This dialog displays all the companies that you, as a user, have access to on the server.
   • New Company: If you have the proper permissions, click to open the New Company dialog. Type in a company name and click OK. New companies are disabled by default.
   • New Pub Type: If you have the proper permissions, select an existing company and click to open the New Publication Type dialog. Type in a publication type name and click OK. New publication types are disabled by default.
4. Click Next when ready. If your document contains any images, the Add Variable Images window appears.
5. In the Add Variable Images window, PrintShop Mail displays all the resources that are used by the document including all external files, PDFs and images. This includes files called using TEXT_FILE as well as fonts. PrintShop Mail Design detects files called using variable expressions, so all the files here should be the only ones needed. You can, however, click Show Browser to browse to extra files to upload, select them and click Add to add them.
6. Click Next. PrintShop Mail Design prepares the document by compressing all its files in a single compressed ZIP file.
   
   
7. Click Finish to compress the document.
8. Once the message Successfully uploaded the new document appears, click OK.
9. Check for any warnings then click OK to send the document to PrintShop Mail Web, or Cancel to close the dialog and return to PrintShop Mail.

What is sent with the document?

When PrintShop Mail Design prepares and sends a document to PrintShop Mail Web, a number of files are included with the actual PrintShop Mail Design document alongside it in the zip file. This is a list of files that are sent.

• Fonts: Only freely distributable fonts will be added automatically. A warning message will be displayed about fonts that need license before publishing. You need to verify if the necessary licenses are available to add the fonts that need licenses. It is possible to choose to upload the licensed fonts directly to avoid a manual upload of the fonts at the PrintShop Web server.
• Plugins: When publishing a PrintShop Mail document which contains plugin objects, the availability and the version of the plugin will be checked with the PrintShop Web server before publishing.
• Macros: When publishing a PrintShop Mail document which contains external macros, the availability of the macro will be checked with the PrintShop Web server before publishing. The check is based on the filename only.
• Images: All images that are referred to by the document, even with variable expressions, are sent along.
• PDF Settings: If your document has specific PDF Settings (jobinfos, only used when generating PDFs), they are included in the zip file.
• Text Files and RTF files: When using the TEXT_FILE function, all text files referred to by your expression are included.

More information about managing uploaded documents, Companies and Publication Types can be found in the PrintShop Mail Web Administration Guide.