JobName

This page applies to Harlequin v13.1r0 and later; both Harlequin Core and Harlequin MultiRIP.

The name of a job has various uses. It is used to identify pages in the Output Controller in GUI versions and to generate filenames when output is to TIFF, is echoed on progress dials and across AppleTalk to a printing Macintosh, and is written in log files, and so on. This name is determined in a complex way from the following sources:

• The %%Title comment at the beginning of a job (which is the only place where LaserWriter version 8 drivers on Macintosh provide the correct job name)
• The jobname entry in statusdict (a standard convention)
• The JobName user parameter (an Adobe extension)
• The name of the file containing the job (which for non-relative devices will also be the name of the device, for example %appletalk%)

The complexity arises because Apple changed its Macintosh PostScript-language driver at version 8 to provide the job name only in PostScript comments, not in the job itself.

Setting the user parameter JobName also sets jobname in statusdict as a side effect. However, if the user parameter JobName matches the information given with the %%For comment (give or take a page number), as it does in output from the Macintosh LaserWriter version 8 drivers, it is automatically replaced with the information from %%Title. It is rearranged to match the normal format of jobname provided with older LaserWriter drivers.

However it is determined, the job name is transmitted to the %pagebuffer% device with a device parameter called JobName so that it is available for naming output files.

GUI versions of the RIP set the jobname in statusdict to the name of the file from which the job is to be read, before the job is run. This means that there is at least some default for the name of the job if it is not provided by the job itself.