Typesetting

When you know the characters to be set, the font involved, the amount of text and the space in which its to be placed; typesetting can still be challenging. Setting static type on a static curve – well that’s another challenge. Performing these tasks when all these things are unknown until a variable page is printed – well that’s a different story. And, those are the capabilities PSL delivers – in spades.

Professional grade typesetting can be applied to variable data and be based on variables as well. For example the font to be used can be based on a variable (such as gender) in the merge data. Dozens of commands are available and each with a high degree of control. For (just one) example the underlining command permits specification of “how far under” the underline goes and, as well, it’s weight. Furthermore such “distances” are based on ascender and descender length of the font in question. The same is true of sub and superscripting. Using TrueType™ and OpenType™ fonts means scaling, line weight, filling, slant and rotation, shadowing, mirroring, etc. are all under program control. The same is true for letter spacing (tracking), word spacing and leading.

Samples:

Word Processing

Again, word processing is sufficiently challenging when placing static text in static locations. But placing varying amounts of text in spaces that vary in size and location, and even shape, requires a pretty complete tool kit – which PSL provides.

With variable data the concept of word processing take on some interesting twists and quite often involves “text boxes.” PSL employs two types of boxes for text, in addition to the page. In one type the box behaves much like a page, taking on the properties, such as font, size, slant, etc applied to the text. Word wrap and flow from box to box (or page to page) can be automatically applied.

In a second type of box the text takes on the properties assigned to the box itself. In that case, rather than wrapping or flowing from box to box, font sizes are adjusted from the target (downward) to cause the phrase to fit the box. Lower limits can be set so that users are warned when the font had to be reduced too low to fit a box.

Perhaps more importantly using the wealth of typesetting commands discussed above and some special “word processing” commands, such as finding out how much vertical or horizontal space is still available; one can create functions to make the text behave just about any way one would want.
Vertical borders of text boxes can be any shape desired. One can fit text to a curve – most any curve.

Samples:

Image Import and Manipulation

PSL can import most all common image formats, including TIFF, GIF. JPEG, and of course PDF (by page number if necessary). PSL users have control of locating, scaling (anisotropic), controlling opacity and transparency, rotation, changing color intensity and more. Images can be placed on top of one-another to produce interesting effects such as the picture in a frame – see below.
Images can be fit to image boxes in a variety of ways – including “force to fit” (which can be dangerous!)

PSL actually produces PDF files rather than simply modifying them and sending them on. One result of that is that PSL is incredibly fast. PSL can merge files at rates up to 30,000 records a minute. Even the most complex projects typically merge at 10,000 records a minute. Consequently PSL is quite suitable for generating PDFs on the fly, running on a web server. Tests have show that PSL can generate, upon a query passing data, 200 to 300 PDFs a second – on a single CPU. That should support the heaviest web traffic!!

Samples:

Graphic Image Creation

PSL is not a “plug-in” to static design systems such as InDesign™ or Quark™. PSL does (of course) deal with images created in those (and other) static design packages. However, PSL can create a wide variety of images based on (static or) variable data. One can create curves of all sorts and fit text to them. Furthermore thanks to extensive math capabilities, PSL users can create interesting geometric figures, make closed or open figures, control line weight, line and fill colors, etc. The Bezier function is often useful for such matters.

As a footnote, because PSL is not a plug-in to a static design package, it processes merge files quite quickly; 20,000 to 30,000records per minute is quite common. PSL produces PDF and/or PostScript output at these rates.

PSL “comes with” a library of useful shapes, and of course, firms may well want to create their own libraries of such things.

Samples:

Color Control

PSL supports RGB, CMYK and HSL. Users can pick from a library of pre-defined and named colors or define his or her own using an interactive (HSL) display.

An interesting example of PSL’s attention to color detail is a command – “newDarkercolor, x” which defines a color x fraction darker than “color.” This is quite useful when dealing with transparency or shading a figure.

PSL users can set an intensity directive to reduce the intensity of all colors in an image (or line, or font) – the equivalent of screening to a lithographer.

And, of course, color is a data type meaning one has the ultimate control of colors based on variables in the data.

Samples:

Files, Tables and Lists

First, there are no limits. Files, tables, and lists can be any size. If any of these are really huge, PSL can be set to deal with them in batches. The same is true for output – PSL can set batch sizes to anything you want for printing and archiving.

All of these elements are recursive – meaning that lists can be lists of lists of lists, etc.

PSL offers a quite complete set of commands for printing tables. Rows and columns can be given all sorts of controls – like background and border colors, border line weight and color, set font size to fit, minimum font size (warning if violated). Lists of such parameters can be cycled through to alternate colors and other parameters of tables to be printed. “Autopage” can be set so table printing can be one page or as many pages as necessary to print a table. You don’t need to know how many rows a table has to print the table. Just sent up the columns and rows and start printing.

Samples:

Functions, Logic and Program Control, and Math

One of the key features of PSL is its use of functions. PSL “comes with” a quite rich set off functions and users can create their own “company wide” libraries of functions.

In individual programs the use of functions provides for quite orderly and easily developed programs. In one of the more complicated application PSL has been called on to perform nearly 20 different forms are involved and over a dozen languages are required. Of course the language issue is facilitated with PSL’s Unicode architecture which supports dozens of languages. But the interesting part of this application is that a daily run of tens of thousands of form is that they are “mix and match” – many different forms and languages in one run. The “main” program is one line long – simply calling a library function for the specific form and language.

Like files, tables and lists, functions are recursive. So, a function can be an argument for another function, and so on.

PSL can call other programs and/or dlls, or be called by them. This makes PSL a language of choice for integration in corporate wide workflows.

Declarations are not required. Functions and definitions can be placed anywhere in the program
In PSL arithmetic can be performed in BCD (binary coded decimal) to suit accounting applications or binary floating point for speed.

Initially blocks. Being a merge engine, the PSL program is run once for each data record. However code that runs once at the beginning only – for calling programs and libraries, user queries, system state queries, read in a big tables, etc. can be done only once in what we call an “Initially” block.

There are no limits to; size of programs, number of variables, tables, lists, and files and functions.

The math precision can be set to almost anything.

Nearly unlimited coordinate transformations are allowed.

Printing and Runtime Options

Serving those who print large volumes on laser printers, PSL provides a useful set of options for dealing with files and print runs.

Useful Libraries

PostalLib

Shapes