I would like the ability to utilize multiple PPDs within a form. I often have the same form spread over multiple makes and models of printers. Because of the tray and finishing options, I have different forms for each printer.

If I need to make some design changes, I need to replicate the changes in all of the forms.

I "See" where you could add multiple PPD's into the form with the design tool. You would select a PPD and associate all of the tray and finisher settings, then set an "instance" name for the PPD to be used when calling the form.

When you added a form using Watch you would select the "instance" that matches the printer selected in the plugin.

Yes, we'd love to provide this functionality... but it is far from simple. With PPDs often containing proprietary commands and syntax, it would be next to impossible to match PPD commands specified in a PP-Design document across multiple PPDs.

For instance, the Duplex option, which one would think to be a fairly "standard" command, exists in a variety of forms in various PPDs. And I won't even get into the multiple language issues.

The only way we could ensure this would work would be by actually *preventing* end-users from using a specific PPD and instead force them to use our own, proprietary PPD (in which, of course, all known commadns would always be consistent and understood by our applications).

Then, we would have to provide end-users with a tool to map the equivalent commands from all their PPDs (granted, many of those could be *guessed* correctly by the tool, but still, it would involve a bit of work).

Oh... and this would make all previously created templates incompatible...

So... I'm afraid this one is not going to be implemented in the near future.

Sorry!

A PPD editing tool sounds cool.

Do you have anything to help with this?

This would allow advanced users to merge 2 or more PPDs to produce a user-defined PPD that would work on any of their printers.

Its worth remembering that most users only use a small number of the options in the PPD, and the unused options can be safely ignored. (For example I rarely need anything beyond the duplexing and stapling commands.)

True, few users actually use all the commands in a PPD. However, across the thousands of users of PlanetPress, it's safe to assume each PPD command is used by someone, somewhere. So PlanetPress can't pick and choose what it needs to support supports: it's all or nothing.

And no, we do not have a PPD editing tool (I was only explaining what we'd have to do to support multiple PPD's).

My idea is not so much using a bunch of PPDs at one time. This would be more of a way to make settings for a single PPD just as you do currently, but adding the ability to configure several PPDs within the form and then when calling the form you would select/configure (in the trigger) which PPD is active for run time.

In other words let's say you 1 form called "SAMPLE" and have 3 printers that use 3 different PPDs.

You would define the PPD #1 attributes and then assign a call number of 1 to it.
You would define the PPD #2 attributes and then assign a call number of 2 to it.
You would define the PPD #3 attributes and then assign a call number of 3 to it.

When you call the form using PlanetPress Watch you would select the "SAMPLE" form and select a different call number for the printer you are using.

The case for this is for locations that have a single of forms, but a vast array of printers that do not share PPDs and for one reason or another can't use the default PPD. In the worst case senario, this requires creating a separate form for each printer. With locations that have loads of remote locations this can be in the hundreds.

If there is a change to the basic design of the single form, this requires touching the hundreds of nearly identical forms or duplicating each one and resetting the printer features.

Yep, that's basically how we'd like to implement the feature as well. But as I stated earlier, creating something that's *generic* is challenging.