Defining the Page Placement Rules
Page placement rules can be defined using wildcards, page number and document page placeholders, multiple positions, and variables.
Wildcards
A wildcard is a kind of ‘joker’ card, which you can insert in the document name when defining the placement rule. It ignores the part of the document name where you have inserted the wildcard.
There are two types of wildcards:
Wildcard | Meaning |
|---|
? | Matches any single character, |
* | Matches any string of one or more characters or no character at all. |
If you precede the wildcards by a “\”, the characters have their literal meaning.
The following examples will clarify the use of wildcards:
Rule | Matches | No match |
|---|
A?B | ACB AAB ABB | AB ABC |
AB? | ABC ABL | AB ABCD |
AB* | AB ABC ABCCCCC ABCDFHG23 | AAB CAB |
*AB | AB CAB DGH235AAB | ABC |
A*B | AB AFB AAAAghB AGHTD4516B | ABC CAB |
AB\* | AB* | AB ABC |
ECO3-H?-*N | ECO3-H1-aa2N ECO3-H6-OO5N ECO3-H0-002aN | ECO3-H-Nb2 ECO3-H555-1N |
Page Number Placeholders
Every placement rule has to contain a reference. There are the following types of placeholder references:
•<RLPAGE>: This matches a string of digits of any size.
•<RLPAGE@m>: This matches a string of digits of any size, offset from the first page by <m> page positions (you must replace ‘m’ by an offset number).
•<RLPAGE:n>: This matches a string of exactly n digits.
•<RLPAGE:n@m>: This matches a string of exactly n digits, offset from the first page by <m> page positions (you must replace ‘m’ by an offset number).
Placeholder references are placed between the angular brackets - < and >.
NOTE: The <RLPAGE@m> offsets specify an offset that it added to the page number; the combined sum gives the final Run List position. This allows you to divide the Run List into different sections each using a different starting position. It is not possible to read an offset from the file name.
The following examples clarify the use of these placeholder references:
Rule | Matches | Placeholder | No match |
|---|
ABC -<RLPAGE> | ABC-1 ABC-01 ABC-12345 | 1 1 12345 | ABC-P1 ABC-0,1 |
ABC-<RLPAGE:3> | ABC-001 ABC-123 | 1 123 | ABC-01 ABC-P1 |
A??C-<RLPAGE:2> | ABCC-02 A2DC-25 | 2 25 | ABC-1 ABBCD-P02 |
Multiple Positions
In some rare cases, a page needs to be placed in several positions in the Run List. To do this, you need to specify two or more <RLPAGE> placeholders in the rule. However, make sure that the filename matches all placeholders, and that the number of pages in the document is less than the gap between two successive run list positions (e.g. a 10-page document cannot be positioned on position 1 and 5).
For example:
Rule | Matches | Matches |
|---|
<RLPAGE:2><RLPAGE:2> | 6401 | 1 and 64 |
0203 | 2 and 3 |
1513 | 13 and 15 |
Variables
A placement rule can also include one more variable. These variables refer to certain job attributes such as job name or customer name.
Variable | Refers to... in the Administration Tab |
|---|
$JOB | The Job name field |
$CUSTOMER | The Customer name field |
$ORDER | The Order number field |
$OPERATOR | The Operator field |
Variables can have a width modifier, through which the variable is replaced with the exact given amount of characters. If the document name does not correspond to the amount of characters, there are two possibilities:
•If the content is longer than the specified amount, Apogee truncates it.
•If the content is shorter, Apogee pads the document name with “?”.
See “General Examples” below for examples of the width modifier.
NOTE: The variable content cannot contain wildcards, placeholders or other variables, except for the “?” for padding the document name.
General examples
For a job that has the following attributes:
•Job name: AB1234
•Order number: 0106G
•Customer: ECO3
Rule | Document name | Position |
|---|
$ORDER-P<RLPAGE:2> | 0106G-P01 | 1 |
$CUSTOMER*ORDER-?*-<RLPAGE:3> | ECO30106G-A3-004 | 4 |
$CUSTOMER??-<RLPAGE:3>?? | ECO35A-102AB | 102 |
$CUSTOMER:3-<RLPAGE:3> | ECO-023 | 23 |
$CUSTOMER:6-<RLPAGE:3> | ECO3BE-023 | 23 |