Digital Workshop

I can't get buttons in Opus Pro 4.50 to respond when set to print external txt files. When click nothing happens. Objects or other pages in the publication print as they should. I've tried in preview mode and as a published exe, the results are the same.

I created separate sample pubs in both Opus Pro 4.5 and 2.81 for testing. What I did notice with the EXEs was when the print file button was clicked in Opus 4.50 the pub lost focus and it didn't return until I click on the screen, with Opus 2.81 when the print button was clicked the program only lost focus for a split second and printed the txt files.

Note: The paths used to link to the files work in Opus Pro 2.81.

Could someone look at the attached (Opus 4.50) zip file and see if the buttons set to print the external txt files work on their system. I've tried to print to a HP Laser Jet 4 (Lpt1), Canon S600 (USB) and a Epson R300 (USB).

TIA

Leo --

I thought of a couple of things that might have been wrong, but after testing 4.5, I'm finding the same thing you are. I can Print the current Page; a specific Page; and an Object on the current Page; but I can't print an external .txt file. The printer doesn't even show anything goes into the print queue.

DW -- Please look into this. It worked before. I'm sure a "wire has been disconnected under the hood."

Leo/Fred

Sorry you're having problems with 4.5, but I can't even print text files in 2.81. I've tried to follow Robin's patient advice (and, I suspect, tried his patience in the process - see recent "Printing text files from CD" thread) but to no avail.

If you can point me in the right direction I'd really appreciate it.

TIA

Roger,

I suggest the following, if you can print from the floppy drive then you should have no problem printing from a CD-ROM.

Download the attached zip file.
Open in Opus Pro 2.81 and create an exe file from the imp.
Copy the created exe and one.txt to a floppy diskette, plus the DOCS folder found in the zip file.

In Windows Explorer move to A: drive and double click on the created EXE file.

You should be able to print the one.txt file as well as the files located in the DOCS sub folder.

I hope I explained the process clearly. They all print correctly on my OS

Thanks very much for your help and swift response, Leo. Hopefully, I'll come back to you with a largest emoticon grin I can find!

Roger

It works a treat, Leo. Seems that the dot before the docs (i.e. .\docs) was the problem. After removing the dot, the printer sprang into action! Once again, many thanks.

DW

could someone at DW verify that printing an external text file in Opus 4.50 doesn't work and let me know?

TIA

For what it's worth, Leo, all I manage to achieve when I try to print external text files in 4.5. is that the printer spews out a blank page.

Can I add that being able to embed text files would be a real bonus. The fact that users can view them by browsing the publication CD is not good.

Hi,

Thank you for your enquiry.

I am able to print external text files without problems on our test machines.

Please find attached a zip folder containing a sample Opus Pro 04 publication, test.txt file and a folder named subdirectory containing another test.txt file.

Please open this project into Opus Pro 04 and preview. You should now see two buttons, click on the first button (which prints the test.txt file in the publication directory) and follow the on-screen prompts to print the file. Now click on the second button (which prints the test.txt file in the subdirectory) and follow the on-screen prompts to print the file.

This publication works without fail on all of our test machines. Could you please let me know the outcome on your systems?

Kind regards,

If security is a concern, the best solution would be to copy and paste the text from the original document into a standard text object on the page. You may need to tweak some of the formatting to restore the original layout, but this will ensure that the text is not accessible on the CD-ROM. You should also be able to print the text object without experiencing the issues you have encountered printing external files (although I hope we can also get to the bottom of this as this functionality is working perfectly on our test machines).

Kind regards,

Leo,

In response to your original post, your sample publication contained a number of errors which may have been contributing partly to the problems you were experiencing. For example, the second and third buttons were set to print a file named one.txt in the docs directory. However, the actual name of the text file in this directory is doc-one.txt.

I have attached a modified version of your publication which works on all of our test machines. As you can see I have set the first print action to print one.txt, but have disabled the In publication directory when published option as specifying no path to the file appears to have the same effect.

The second print action is set to:

.\docs\doc-one.txt

and again the In publication directory when published option is disabled as the full-stop and backslash tell the publication to look within its current directory.

Please let me know if you experience the same problems printing from this sample.

Kind regards,

Thanks for the sample, Robin. This printed the external text file without problems. Not sure why I couldn’t achieve this previously.

As far as the ability to embed external text files is concerned, I take your point about pasting the text into a standard text object – but, in this case, each block of text occupies about two A4 printed pages. In other words, there’s too much text to fit into a text object. Or am I displaying my ignorance once again?

You can put a scroll bar on a text object...

Or if the text files you're using are just plain text you could use the file actions to encrypt them so users couldn't browse them. (Well they could but they'd just see gobblegook.

You could also enable the Hidden attribute on the text files before writing the publication to CD. To do this, simply open Windows Explorer (by right-clicking on the Start button and selecting Explore), navigate to the directory containing the text file, then right-click on the file and select Properties. Now select the General tab and you should see the Hidden checkbox. Enable this then click OK.

The chances are that Windows is currently set up to hide hidden files and the text file disappears from view. To correct this, click Tools > Folder Options and select the View tab. Now enable the Show hidden files and folders setting and click OK. The text file should now reappear.

You can now burn the publication executable, text files and any other required files to CD and test. The vast majority of your end-users will be unable to see the text files you have hidden (although experienced users may have already enabled the 'Show hidden files' setting and will see these resources).

Kind regards,

Thanks Leiafee and Robin. I appreciate your suggestions.

The scroll bar option only helps when it comes to reading the text on the screen. All that’s printed out is the portion within the text box. In addition, there are about 750 rtf files – each containing in the region of 400 words. And I don’t really fancy copying/pasting them all.

I hadn’t considered encrypting the files – but they include fancy bullet points and other bits and pieces apart from plain text and I guess these would cause problems.

I like the idea of hiding the files, Robin. I suspect that most of the people using the CD won’t know about disabling hidden attributes.

Once again, thanks to you both for your help.

Kind regards