This chapter lists all preferences that are pertinent to PrintPreview. Find a description of how to set, view, change or delete preferences, with the HELIOS utility programs “prefdump”, “prefvalue”, and “prefrestore”, in the HELIOS Base manual.
Make sure that preference keys DO NOT start or end with a slash (“/”) character, and note that they are case-sensitive! Also, if any preference key or preference value includes spaces, that key or value must be enclosed in quotes.
Key: Printers/<printer queue>/<preference>
(HELIOS Admin option Include Separations)
The parameter controls whether or not you want to have previews of the separation plates of your document.
(HELIOS Admin option Text Quality)
Determines the text rendering quality. There are two values available, “high”, which is the default, and “low”. “high” means that a font-specific algorithm is utilized for rendering the glyphs more accurately. “low” has the advantage of faster rendering.
Determines the image rendering quality. There are two values available, “high”, which is the default, and “low”. If an image has a higher resolution than the output device, and is therefore downscaled, a better image rendering algorithm is used. This needs some time, so this preference is primarily meant to switch this algorithm off.
(HELIOS Admin option In-RIP Separations)
If set to TRUE, PrintPreview generates separated raster data
for process and spot colors, directly from a composite PostScript
job. See also A.4 “Using in-RIP separation with PrintPreview”.
(HELIOS Admin option Include Color Preview)
This preference controls whether or not the composite view of your document is included in the preview file.
(HELIOS Admin option Suppress Forward to Hold Queue)
This preference will induce PrintPreview to keep the
preview file in the preview queue instead of forwarding it
to a hold queue. However, if a new queue is created in HELIOS Admin, this preference
is switched off, i.e. set to FALSE.
(HELIOS Admin option Antialias)
This preference controls whether or not smoothing of
contours should be applied to the preview files. It can be advisable
to set it to FALSE if the preview resolution (see
resolution below) exceeds the monitor resolution.
(HELIOS Admin option Info Page)
By default, PrintPreview generates an info page for each
job on a preview queue and adds it to the preview file. Set
this preference to FALSE to switch off the insertion of the
info page.
(HELIOS Admin option Resolution)
This preference lets you specify the resolution (in dpi) you want to have for your preview files.
(HELIOS Admin option Compression)
Allowed strings for defining the compression of preview
files are none, zip, jpeg, and jp2.
none is the default. zip is best-suited, because
it guarantees lossless compression. The jpeg and jp2
quality of compression depends on jpegquality (see below).
(HELIOS Admin option Compression)
This preference lets you specify the JPEG and JPEG 2000
compression quality of preview files in a range from 0…100:
JPEG Low Quality 20 JPEG Medium Quality 50 JPEG High Quality 75 (default) JPEG Maximum Quality 100 JPEG 2000 Low Quality 5 JPEG 2000 Medium Quality 8 JPEG 2000 High Quality 10 JPEG 2000 Lossless 0 (default)
If set to TRUE, preview files will contain thumbnails of all
pages you have printed.
Allows you to define a resolution for the thumbnails. The default
resolution is 8 dpi.
PrintPreview uses for PostScript interpretation the PostScript
level that is stated in the queue’s PPD file. In case no PPD
file has been assigned, the default language level is 2. If this
preference is set to FALSE it induces PrintPreview to ignore
the PPD file entry and to use the default PostScript Level 2.
With this preference, you can force PrintPreview to use a
specific PostScript language level. Possible values are “1”,
“2”, and “3”. If you set languagelevel, this will override the
PPD file setting, and the ppdlanguagelevel preference – if
specified at all – will be ignored as well.
Usually, PostScript errors – if there are any – are added to
the printer log file. You can switch off the recording of
PostScript errors by setting the flag to FALSE.
A preview queue can be regarded as an RGB or CMYK
PostScript device. When rendering a job on a preview
queue, a so-called CRD (Color Rendering Dictionary) is
required for the transformation of PostScript CIE-based
colors in a job. Two CRDs are initialized by default – one
for the transformation of CIE-based colors into RGB and
one for the transformation into CMYK. The RGB CRD
corresponds to sRGB, the CMYK CRD corresponds to
Euroscale CMYK. The swopcrd flag can be used to change
the CMYK standard and select SWOP instead of Euroscale.
Particularly customers with SWOP printing inks should set
this flag.
This preference controls the PostScript virtual memory of PrintPreview (in bytes) for creating screen previews in layout files. You should use the parameter to enter a value higher than the default (60000 kB) – lower values are not recommended.
This preference controls the global PostScript virtual memory of PrintPreview (in bytes) for creating screen previews in layout files. You should use the parameter to enter a value higher than the default (10000 kB) – lower values are not recommended.
(HELIOS Admin option Directory)
This preference may be used to save new preview files automatically into an already created “pdfdir” directory on the server. The value for this preference must be a full UNIX path name, e.g. “/data/previews”. The hold queue contains a symbolic link to the preview file in the “pdfdir” directory.
If the print job is renamed or removed from its original location the link does not work anymore and you will not be able to access the preview from HELIOS Admin.
Preview files that are saved into a UNIX directory (using this preference) will automatically be assigned a file name extension, namely “.pdf”.
If a file is sent to a preview queue, with this option set to
FALSE, the print job remains “untouched” and is processed
without any changes.
(HELIOS Admin option Name Prefix)
This preference will only be recognized if pdfdir is specified as well. With “str”, you can define a file name prefix for all preview files that are sent to the selected directory. This can help you classify your previews if you have several preview queues and save all preview files into the same directory.
(HELIOS Admin option Notify Program)
This preference will only be recognized if pdfdir is specified as well. It lets you enter the path to a UNIX program, e.g. “/usr/local/bin/pdfnotify”. This program will be started automatically after printing has been finished successfully.
“viewif” exports the following environment variables during the program call:
HELIOSDIR= <environment variable for the HELIOS install path> HELIOS_JOBFOR= <user name (if available) of print job creator> HELIOS_JOBUSER= <user name (if available) as known to "lpd"> HELIOS_JOBHOST= <name (if available) of server which hosts the printer queue> HELIOS_JOBTITLE= <print job title (if available)> HELIOS_PRINTERNAME= <logical (UNIX) name of the printer queue> HELIOS_JOBPAGES= <expected number of pages. This value may differ slightly from the actual number> HELIOS_JOBSIZE= <expected print job size (in bytes). The stated value is often smaller than the actual size> HELIOS_VFFILE= <name of created PDF file>
(HELIOS Admin option Create Folder for Each User)
Specifies if the PDF files are stored in a separate folder per user.
Specifies the Acrobat compatibility level of the generated PDF files. There are two values available:
3=PDF 1.2 (Acrobat 3) 4=PDF 1.3 (Acrobat 4)
If the compatibility level is set to 4, and the preview queue
has a printer or proof profile attached, then this ICC profile
will be included in the generated PDF file, and the generated
bitmaps use ICC-based color spaces.
If this preference is set to TRUE, the “Print To Disk” interface reports events
to all listening services.
(HELIOS Admin option Add Transparency Mask Channel)
If set to TRUE, PrintPreview places a transparency mask on
its own page in the PDF output.
(HELIOS Admin option Add Transparency Mask Layer)
If set to TRUE, PrintPreview places a transparency mask in an
optional PDF layer so the mask can cross-fade the composite
view. Of course this option makes only sense if a
composite view is generated at all. Therefore the HELIOS
Admin checkbox Include Transparency Mask Layer can only
be selected if Include Color Preview is activated.
Specifies the name of the spot color with which the transparency mask cross-fades the composite view. The spot color can be modified in the spot color editor. That way the color of the transparency mask is defined.
Enables “viewif” to issue a transparency mask, even though the PostScript job or single pages of a job do not contain any transparencies. Thus the generated transparency masks are empty. However, consistent paging within the PDF document is guaranteed.