Tabbed PDF plugin

This plugin is used to merge all multi-page PDFs to form a single-tabbed PDF file based on a placeholder. This plugin creates bookmarked PDF files in the configured export folder by merging all multi-page PDFs.

Select the Export module and navigate to TABBED_PDF plugin configuration page. You can edit the plugin settings as per your requirements.

Configurable properties

The following configurable properties are available for the TABBED_PDF plugin. Options can differ on Windows and Linux environments.

Configurable property

Type of value

Value options

Description

Tabbed PDF switch

List of values

  • ON
  • OFF

Determines whether the plugin runs or not. The default is OFF.

Tabbed PDF export folder

String (folder path)

Example: C:\Ephesoft\SharedFolders\tabbed-pdf-export-folder

Folder in which the output tabbed PDF and multi-page tiff file (if created) are stored.

Tabbed PDF placeholder

List of values

  • YES
  • NO
  • If this switch is set to YES, this plugin creates the document map by order or priority of document types defined in the export-script.properties file. In this case, a tab is created in document map for each document type and load the error PDF if the document is not present in batch.xml.
  • If this switch is set to NO, this plugin will create a document map on the basis of documents present in batch.xml. Tabs are created only for documents that are present in batch.xml.

By default, this option is set to NO.

Tabbed PDF property file

String (file path)

Example: C:\Ephesoft\SharedFolders\property\export-script.properties

This property file has document types and their priority in a predefined format.

Tabbed PDF creation parameters

String

Example: -q -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=pdfwrite

These parameters are used by ghost script at the time of PDF creation.

PDF optimization switch

List of values

  • ON
  • OFF

Determines whether the PDF optimization is performed or not. The default is ON.

PDF optimization engine

List of values

  • OmniPage (default)
  • Ghostscript

The field to select the PDF Optimization Engine for optimizing the exported PDF file.

Tabbed PDF Ghostscript optimization parameters

String

Example: -dQUITE -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dPDFSETTINGS=/ebook

These parameters are used by the ghost script at the time of PDF optimization.

Tabbed PDF OmniPage optimization parameters

String

Example: -compressionLevel=5 -compressionType=COMPRESSION_ADVANCED

These parameters are used by OmniPage at the time of PDF optimization.

Property file configuration

The property file is located at the following location: [Ephesoft_Directory]/WEB-INF/classes/META-INF/dcma-tabbed-pdf/dcma-tabbed-pdf.properties

Configurable property

Type of value

Value options

Description

tabbed_pdf.ghost_script_command

String

  • gswin64c
  • gswin32c

Ghost script command for Linux and Windows.

tabbed_pdf.unix_ghost_script_command

String

gs

Ghost script command for Unix.

Steps of execution

  1. This plugin uses the batch.xml file, multipage PDF files, and multipage .tiff files inside batch instance folder.

  2. The batch.xml is updated with the processing results.

  3. All multipage PDF files are combined to create a single PDF document and copied to the tabbed-pdf-export-folder inside SharedFolders.

    The PDF filename uses the following format: <name of batch folder>_<batch instance identifier>.pdf.

    Example: BC1_BI3.pdf.

  4. The first multi-page TIFF is copied to the tabbed-pdf-export-folder inside SharedFolders, and the remaining multi-page TIFF files will be lost.

Dependency

The plugin assumes that multi-page PDFs are created by batch preprocessing. The Create Multipage Files plugin should be in the batch class workflow to create multipage PDFs. Also, the export-script.properties file should appear in the correct position with accurate information.

Troubleshooting

If a malfunction occurs with the Create Multipage Files plugin, the following error messages may appear.

Error message

Possible root cause

"{folderPath} is not a Directory."

Folder path configured by user is not valid.

"Property file for documents not valid."

Same priority is defined for more than one document type.

"File does not exist. File Name="{file-name}""

Invalid PDF file name is mentioned in batch.xml.

"Error in writing pdfMarks file."

Some error occurred while processing.

"Enviornment Variable GHOSTSCRIPT_HOME not set"

GHOSTSCRIPT_HOME is not set in environment variable or in startup.bat file inside the [Ephesoft_Directory]\JavaAppServer\bin folder.

"No ghostcript command specified in properties file."

Either the dcma-tabbed-pdf.properties file is not present, or properties are missing in the properties file.

"Sample PdfMarks file not provided."

pdfmarks.dat is not present at specified location.

If the tabs of the exported PDF are not arranged by Acrobat Reader DC (v.2018.009.20050) according to the priority specified in export-script.properties, you have to manually change the following setting:

  1. In Adobe Acrobat Reader DC, click Edit from the top menu and select Preferences.

  2. In the General tab, select Basic Tools.

  3. Check the box Enable PDF thumbnail previews in Windows Explorer, and wait for the Windows to configure Adobe Acrobat DC.

Now the PDF tabs are shown in the correct order.