Understanding how page sizes are applied

Determining the correct page size and orientation to render a document is a challenge for any application. Documents use many different formats and many different standard page sizes exist. The post-processing features of Meridian Enterprise Server introduce another level of complexity to the challenge. That is, like rendering options, watermark definitions can also specify a page size and orientation to which they are applied. This is so that they can calculate the relative location of the watermark text. To reduce the number of possible combinations of watermarks and page sizes, the watermark definitions should be able to be applied to a limited set of page sizes. Identical page size names in multiple rendering applications seldom exist. The challenge can be even more difficult if page size and orientation information is stored differently in the source system properties than is expected by either the rendering configuration or the watermark definitions.

Meridian Enterprise Server meets this challenge by allowing the page sizes and orientations to originate from two sources: document properties in the source system or the independent, standard page sizes that are provided by the operating system of the Meridian Enterprise Server server. Meridian Enterprise Server uses flexible logic and resorts to default values for exceptional cases. This makes it possible to configure complex rendering and watermarking scenarios without a lot of work.

Note    All possible page sizes and name variations may not be defined in the operating system print server, for example, A0. If the size that you want to use is missing, create a custom form as described in the operating system documentation.

The logic that is employed depends on the rendering module that is assigned to a particular document:

• AutoVue rendering module – the rendering module and the watermark definitions use the same page sizes as provided by the operating system. Only configuration of the rendition page size is necessary.
• Office rendering module– the rendering module determines the rendition page size automatically from the source document. No configuration is necessary.
• Other rendering modules – the rendering module controls a third-party application that performs the rendering and that may define page sizes in non-standard ways. The watermark definitions use the same page sizes as provided by the operating system. If the two page sizes do not match, watermarking is not possible. An example is the AutoCAD rendering module. AutoCAD defines page sizes with names like ISO full bleed A4 (297.00 x 210 MM) that does not easily match the standard (watermark) page size of A4. This rendering module uses size mapping to specify the standard page size that is the equivalent of each AutoCAD page size. Fuzzy matching logic is used so that insignificant differences between the names are ignored and watermarking can succeed. If a match is not found, the default page size that is configured for the rendering module is applied. Similar size mapping is used by the other CAD application rendering modules.

The challenge of how to configure Meridian Enterprise Server rendering and watermarking page sizes is then reduced to the scenarios that are described in the following topics.