Ricoh InfoPrint Manager for AIX, Manual

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Chapter 16. Understanding transform objects and the
configurable transform subsystem
This chapter contains information about the following:
v
“Transforms”
v “Defining a transform sequence” on page 194
v
“Configuring transforms” on page 195
v
“Examples of creating transform objects” on page 200
Transforms
Transforms are InfoPrint objects (like queues and destinations) that you create and
configure in InfoPrint Manager. Transforms receive data in a particular format or
formats, process the data in some way, and output the changed data. When you
create a transform, you have complete control over what data format or formats it
operates on and what type of processing it does. The processing that the transform
performs can be anything from simply copying the data to a different place on
disk, to filtering the data stream that the transform receives (for example, to
remove a particular PostScript order), to transforming the data to a completely
different format (for example, converting PCL to AFP).
When you create a transform, you specify several things, including:
v
Input data format
The data stream that is sent to the transform. The input data format is what the
transform uses to determine whether it has any work to do. If you send a
PostScript job through a transform that has its input data stream set only to
PCL , the job will bypass the transform without being changed at all. You can set
the transform to accept multiple input data formats.
v Transform options
The program or command that actually does the work of the transform; what
happens during the
processing stage. The transform options can be system
commands (such as copy ), programs provided with InfoPrint Manager (such as
ps2afp ), or your own custom transform programs (for example, mypclfixup ).
When you create a transform, you specify the complete command line needed to
invoke this program or command. Within this command line, you can also
specify various
substitution variables , place holders which InfoPrint Manager
replaces with a value when InfoPrint Manager runs the transform. For example,
if you include
%i
in the line, InfoPrint Manager will replace it with the name of
the file that the transform receives; if you include
%o
, it will be replaced with the
name of the file that the transform needs to put the changed data into.
v Output data format
The output data format is the data stream that results from the transform. You
can only specify one output data format.
In addition, you can specify whether you want the file that the transform produces
to be printed. If the transform does not return the file to be printed (for example, if
the transform completes its processing and saves the file to a different location), it
is called a
terminating transform . In addition to the terminating transform , you can
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