User-driven channel management and presupplied channels in an input plugin

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

The user can create, configure, suspend and delete channels in the Input Controller dialog, accessed by selecting Harlequin MultiRIP> Input Controller.

The configurable aspects of a channel vary according to its class. Because of this, the Input Controller has to have information about the parameters of each channel class. The RIP requests this information in the D_GET_CHANNEL_CLASS_DESCRIPTIONS selector (see D_IP_GET_CHANNEL_CLASS_DESCRIPTIONS ).

The RIP also needs a dialog description, so that it can present the parameters in one when the user selects an input source and clicks on the Configure button. These dialogs must be defined in the plugin code. The method of defining dialogs is the same as that for output plugins. See Input and output plugin parameters and plugin dialogs .

Any channel that can be a source of PostScript language jobs has a named page setup associated with it. This allows the RIP to be configured according to that page setup before the job is run, exactly as for the built‐in input sources of earlier releases.

The channel should also have a name. This name identifies the channel in a PostScript language job. The plugin might also use it to identify the channel to the outside world, for example as an entry in the Chooser, in the Windows Print Manager.

You can provide ready‐made channels for your users, so that there is a default environment suitable for their purposes. To do this, configure the plugin in the usual way and then include the file containing the information for that configuration with each distributed RIP installation. If you take care to maintain the structure of this file, it can also be edited in any text editor just like other configuration files. It consists of carefully structured PostScript language fragments.