DataCard SD260, User Manual

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XPS Card Printer Driver User’s Guide 103
Print Blocking Escapes
The Card Printer Driver provides several methods to prevent printing and topcoat on specific
areas of the card. Refer to “Non-Printing Areas” in your printer’s
Installation and Administrator’s
Guide and “Print Area Tab” on page 81 for more information.
By default, the entire surface of the card is available for printing and topcoating. But when cards
have a magnetic stripe, a smart card chip, or another non-printable area, such as a signature
panel or hologram, you must define those areas so that the printer does not print or apply
topcoat to them.
Use escapes to block non-standard areas, or to define more than one blocking area per side of a
card. Escapes are specific sequences of characters that mark data with a special purpose. The
Card Printer Driver recognizes the following types of print blocking and topcoat escapes:

Print Block

Topcoat Add

Topcoat Remove
About Non-Printing Areas

If the card has more than one non-printing area on a side (for example, a magnetic stripe and
a signature panel), you must define all non-printing areas using print blocking escapes. An
escape applies to the side of the card where it appears in the card design.

Non-printing areas defined using print blocking escapes always override the driver Printing
Preferences settings.

Each print blocking area defined by an escape is a rectangular shape.

You can specify more than one area of the same type in the escape string by placing a
semicolon (;) character between each set of values.

The CR805 retransfer printer uses the print block escape to block printing over the
smart card chip on the front of the card and to specify where to apply the
inhibitor on the card back to prevent printing on the magnetic stripe and
signature panel. Refer to
“Print Bocking in a Retransfer Printer” on page 107 for
complete information.
The printer does not use the topcoat add and topcoat remove escapes.

If you use YMCK or YMCK-K ribbon (ribbons without a topcoat panel), the topcoat
escapes are ignored. Print blocking escapes function normally.