Harlequin RIP skin initialization

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

This phase starts when the RIP is executed by whatever means is appropriate to the environment it is run in, for example by double clicking on a RIP icon in the Windows program manager. It ends when the core RIP is invoked.

The events which occur before the core RIP takes over depend on the product involved. Typically they involve determining the environment the core RIP needs to run in; initializing the GUI, filing system, input and output devices; and checking security.

In command line versions, this is very straightforward: it usually just involves consulting some environment variables and then calling the core RIP.

In the GUI version, the configuration information has to be read from the appropriate files, and plugins have to be loaded. The menu structure is created and windows such as the Monitor window and Output Controller are displayed.

One of the more important tasks of all implementations is the provision and allocation of memory. The core-RIP is provided with memory from the skin, and while it manages this memory, it does not itself allocate any memory. Therefore the skin will need to allocate one or more large chunks of memory for the exclusive use of the core-RIP. This may involve measuring the available memory and consulting environment variables or configuration information to determine how much memory to allocate.

The skin also creates a variety of device types on which PostScript devices can be mounted. In GUI versions, some of these may be implemented in plugins.