PE_RN_New_Features

In uCreate Print and uPlan, when using a text file Data Source (*.txt, *.csv) that contained missing values, the missing values were treated as empty strings. As a result, a QLingo condition comparing this value to an empty string returned a TRUE result. This behavior was inconsistent with uProduce Plan interpretation (Proofset and Job production) that treated missing values as NULL.

In version 6.5, empty strings in text file Data Sources are treated as NULL.
A QLingo condition comparing a missing value in the Data Source — that is now treated as NULL — to an empty string, will return a FALSE result.

The new data type inference mechanism, introduced in version 6.0 (Data Handling Improvements), is now also available on Macintosh. The inference mechanism determines the data types for columns in data files that do not contain type information, such as Excel and TXT files. The new mechanism makes sure that determining the data type does not corrupt the actual data.

uDirect 6.2 discontinues its support of Adobe® Creative Suite (CS) 4.0. The supported versions are: Adobe CS5, CS5.5 and CS6.

The new XMPBarcode function adds many new barcodes to the XMPie system. In addition to the existing barcodes, users of uCreate Print can now also add barcodes such as ISBN, GS1 barcodes including Data Bar, KIX and many more. The XMPBarcode function can also be used to create barcodes in color and to determine module width for one-dimensional barcodes.

XMPBarcode contains a correction to an old issue, allowing to use the CodePage parameter in a Macintosh environment

Creating bleed areas in print output is now possible through supporting the InDesign bleed feature. uCreate Print now respects the bleed definitions used in InDesign and allow documents to be printed using these settings. In addition, elements in the bleed area will be actually displayed. In PDF workflows, bleed information is provided through the PDF Trim Box definition.

This version is a update to the previous release of PersonalEffectand it is compatible with the recently released version of PersonalEffect (6.0.1). PersonalEffect 6.0.1 was released on September 6, 2012.

The XMPie family of products supports the recent release of Adobe^® Creative Suite (CS) 6.0. XMPie customers can take full advantage of all the new CS6 features combined with the power of XMPie:

PersonalEffect 6.0.1 Product

Supported Adobe CS6 Product

uCreate™ Print

InDesign^®

Desktop

uImage^®

Photoshop^®

and Illustrator^®

With the introduction of uDirect 6.0, XMPie is simplifying product component names by aligning the names of the InDesign plug-ins for both the desktop and server solutions. Until now, the InDesign plug-ins included with uDirect configurations were either uDirect Standard or uDirect Professional. For PersonalEffect server configurations, the InDesign plug-ins included were either uCreate Print or uCreate Print Designer. Functionally, there were many overlapping capabilities between the uDirect and uCreate plug-ins for InDesign.

Starting from version 6.0, the name “uDirect” will refer only to the series of desktop configurations. Each package, will include one or more software components with the associated functionality as described below:

		Plug-in Capabilities
Product	InDesign Plug-in Name	Link to Data	Link to Plan	Export CPKG	VDP Output	XLIM	Includes
uDirect Designer	uCreate Print Trial	Yes	No	Yes	PDF (up to 5 records)	No
uDirect Classic	uCreate Print Standard	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	No
uDirect Studio	uCreate Print Standard	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	No	uImage, uChart
uDirect Premier	uCreate Print	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	uImage, uChart, uPlan

With uDirect 6.0, uCreate Print and uPlan include significant improvements to their data access mechanism, which allows the software to correctly identify data types in typeless Data Sources.

Prior to uDirect 6.0, using Excel, CSV or TXT files as Data Sources could cause data corruption. Some examples are:

1. ZIP code values with leading zeros were treated as numbers instead of text. Consequently, the significant leading zeros were removed. As a result, barcodes were created incorrectly because they were not generated using the correct number of digits.

2. Columns that contained both numbers and text were treated as numbers. This caused the records containing non-number values to be evaluated as nulls. As a result, text was not written for these records.

3. In most cases, any data that is longer than 255 characters would be truncated.

These issues occurred because the Data Source file did not include a type definition (such as "number"," date", "Boolean" or just plain text). The data type inference mechanism in uCreate Print and uPlan made decisions about the column types in a manner that may have corrupted data.

Version 6.0 resolves this problem by significantly improving the data type inference mechanism for the Windows environment. As a result, data will no longer be corrupted due to wrong decisions when defining a column's data type. Non-text data types are determined using a safe method ensuring no data is mistakenly removed. For example, both scenarios shown below would result in the correct data type being set.

1. When using Excel files, the new mechanism will assign the same data types as those used by Excel. For example, a value that is considered to be a number in Excel will have the same data type in uCreate Print. The same is valid for dates and Boolean values.

1. Columns that only contain strings of numbers without leading zeros, will be considered as numbers. If some of the rows contain text or leading zeros, the data type would be string. If the data logic requires using such a column as number, use the Qlingo AsNumber function to convert the string to a number.

2. Columns that contain only "0"s and "1"s will be considered as Yes/No data types (Boolean values). If you want to consider them as strings, use the Qlingo function AsString. If you want to use other values for Yes/No types of decisions, use text comparison. For instance, if the Data Source contains "true" or "false" and you want to use them in an “If” statement, simply compare the value to the relevant Boolean string value, namely "true" or "false".

3. Dates are interpreted based on the system regional settings. This is true for separators’ format, the meaning of month and day names, and the order of day/month/year.

Adapting Plans Created prior to Version 6.0.1 to Match the New Data Handling Mechanism

Plans created in versions prior to 6.0.1 may need to be adapted to match the new data handling mechanism. For more information, refer to Technote 0048 “Porting Plans to PersonalEffect 6.0.1 or higher”:

uDirect 6.0 discontinues its support of Adobe® Creative Suite (CS) 3.0. The supported versions are: Adobe CS4, CS5, CS5.5 and CS6.

QLingo extensions implemented for the Windows platform can and must be compiled using Microsoft Visual Studio 2010.

Starting from version 6.0, uCreate Print generates VPS print output that conforms with the VPS 1.5 specifications. As result, uCreate Print is now compatible with all print controllers that support the VPS print format.

Note that configuring PDF output options through the Adobe PDF Settings file (*.joboptions) is no longer required and is not relevant for XLIM production. This is the result of the new implementation of XLIM PDF production that does not use a normalizer.