Auto mode for HVD

This page applies to Harlequin v13.1r0 and later; and to Harlequin Core but not Harlequin MultiRIP.

Both internal and external HVD configurations can benefit from automatically recognizing variable data files and only attempting to use HVD with them. This is controlled with /EnableOptimizedPDFScan, a tri-state parameter with /Always, /Never, or /Auto options.

An example for external mode:

TEXT

<<
  /EnableOptimizedPDFScan /Auto
  /OptimizedPDFScanLimitPercent 90
  /OptimizedPDFExternal true
  /OptimizedPDFCacheID (GGDUMB1)
  /OptimizedPDFGridEpsilon 1
>> setpdfparams
<<
  /ContoneMask 1
>> setpagedevice

An example for internal mode:

TEXT

<<
  /EnableOptimizedPDFScan /Auto
  /OptimizedPDFScanLimitPercent 50
  /OptimizedPDFCacheID (GGIRR)
>> setpdfparams

/Always and /Never enable HVD always and never, respectively. When set to /Auto mode and a PDF file is submitted, the RIP will:

Scan the document-level metadata and determine if the file is tagged as a PDF/VT file. If so, it will scan the contents of the file to see if it can be optimized by HVD.
Look at the producer and creator strings in the document info dictionary and their equivalents in the document-level metadata and compare those with values in a look-up table of strings used by common VDP composition tools. If the strings match, it will scan the contents of the file to see if it can be optimized by HVD; if they don't match, it will not scan the file, just process and output it page by page.

The producer/creator look-up table is available in a PostScript language file called HqnVariableDataCreators found in \SW\Usr. This file can be edited to add extra creators. This PostScript language file returns a dictionary. The keys of the dictionary are names of procedures for matching the known variable data creator strings to the value for creator or producer found in the metadata or info dictionary. Corresponding values of the dictionary are arrays of strings of known variable data creators.

Setting /EnableOptimizedPDFScan to /Auto, /Always, (or true) requires that the rest of the RIP configuration is appropriate for use with HVD. Meaning, for instance, that if you are using simple imposition, you should set HVD to /Never.

If you're using the Scalable RIP, configure AutoHVDChunkSize, as explained in Harlequin VariData (HVD) and the Scalable RIP.