(v13) Pagebuffer parameters

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

PageBufferType is a string or name identifying the target printer (or perhaps class of printers) to which the raster set up by setpagedevice should be sent. In terms of the core-RIP, this means that the value is passed on by a device parameter of the same name to the %pagebuffer% device.

In GUI versions, the name of the device selected in Page Setup (the name of the device itself, not its device type) is set as PageBufferType in a call to setpagedevice. This is passed on to the pagebuffer file and determines which plugin is used for final delivery of the raster.

The two names None and Preview are treated specially in the RIP in respect of:

#copies

and NumCopies in the page device. If the number of copies is non-zero, it is forced to 1 for these two devices (if it is zero, no raster is output for any page buffer type).

PageBufferId is a string that is also passed through to the %pagebuffer% device. It identifies which particular unit from a class of printers the raster is to be delivered to, but its interpretation is wholly up to the implementation of %pagebuffer%. GUI versions of the RIP ignore it, instead classifying all devices under separate names in pageBufferType.

In the Harlequin RIP SDK the pagedevice key PageBufferType may be set to None to cause all raster data to be dropped. The value LE is legal and  automatically defaults to TIFF output.

On the clrip command line, it is possible to provide a -o switch, which can be used to explicitly override /PageBufferType to another value. This reduces the number of configuration files that you may need. For instance, if you want to test CMYK Composite 300dpi output with both TIFF and JPEG, you only need one configuration file rather than two. If the configuration file has /TIFF as the PageBufferType, you can perform the JPEG test by adding -o JPEG to the clrip command line, and using the same configuration file.