RPM Elite Filter Transform

RPM Remote Print Manager™ Elite now offers a tool to make changes to your data inline, during the printing process. This capability is be the common denominator to many conversations we've had with customers doing high end print processing with RPM.

Let's take a look. You'll notice that it is similar to the Filter action. The concept is similar; RPM will run the transforms prior to this one, collect the results, then pass the file to a program of your choice. 

In case you are familiar with the Filter action, we'll cover the similarities briefly then focus on the differences.

First, select the Filter program as you normally would. This is the executable you plan to run.

The GUI will fill in the folder for this program as the Working directory. Frequently that's not what you really want, so choose an appropriate folder. A temp folder is often a good choice but we'll leave that to you.

Before we talk about the Command line arguments let's talk a moment to talk about transforms in general. This will help the rest of the dialog make more sense.

The main difference between transforms and actions is that RPM tracks both the input and output of transforms, and with actions, it provides an  input only.

Note that the command line arguments include %s, which is the file containing the job data, and %o.  The latter is used for the output file. RPM must know how to get the output of your program so it can feed the data to the next transform, or to the action(s).

Let's take a look now at the Files section, We can pass the print job data to the program in a file, in which case we need the Input filename where we construct a filename with the proper extension (if that is important). Or we can say that the program is looking for standard input, in which case the Input filename will be disabled.

Similarly, if the program is looking for a filename to write its results to, use Output filename, and RPM will put that name where %o appears in the command line. Or, specify standard output and the Output filename will be disabled.

Finally, if your program can write to standard error and you want to capture that information, select "Save standard error log". RPM will create a unique filename in the temp folder specified in the General Settings panel of the GUI. The filename will contain the name of the program. If you select this, and the program does not write anything in the standard error file, RPM will remove the file.