PSL Primers

//PSL Primers

PSL Primers

Primers
The “Help/Primers” menu item opens a file dialog that contains a number of introductory documents on various useful subjects. To read one simply double click the entry. The topics covered are listed below. The first three of these contain general information and should be considered as highly recommended reading. The reminder are technical overviews of various PSL programming subjects. They all contain numerous simple (and small) examples.

Value Statements and Expressions

File: “ValueExpressionsAndValueStatements.docx”

Contains an explanation of the use of value statements and value expressions. These permit the page wizard to generate data based variations without PSL coding, from simple text replacement through pretty much any property (such as fonts, colors and images). They handle everything from simple merge field contents, arithmetic, color mapping etc., all the way up to multi-level logic.

Text Files

File: “textFiles.doc”

Contains an explanation of the various formats used for so-called “simple” text files. Like everything else in the world, they are not actually as simple as they look.

Character Delimited Data Files

File: “delimitedDataFiles.doc”

Character delimited data files are by far the most common data file type most PSL users will encounter. This is because numerous common (and some not so common) applications generate them. For example, Microsoft Excel comes with a facility for saving its contents in this format. It is certainly a simple enough format, but there can be “gotchas”.

Fonts

File: “fonts.pdf”

This primer explains some of the “ins and outs” of font management with PSL.

Color Control

Explains the ways in which color is managed in PSL and their impact on printing and color matching.

Text Formatting

File: “textFormatting.doc”

Explains the basics of text formatting in PSL code. Includes an overview of format boxes and the basic typesetting functions.

Programming in PSL

File: “programming.doc”

A simple introduction to the basics PSL programming for non-programmers.

Graphics

File: “graphics.doc”

Outlines the graphic model used by PSL and the basic graphic functions.

Data Tables

File: “dataTables.doc”

With the exception of some so-called “flat” files, the data used by PSL are in the form of database tables. This primer explains the basic data structures and functions provided by PSL for dealing with these. This includes the basic PSL facilities for reading, searching and sorting the information contained in them.

By |2017-08-17T16:29:20-07:00July 6th, 2017|Setup|0 Comments

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