EzMerge - Fields & Block Settings Explained Follow

The Fields and Blocks will be your main place for customizing how your templates will look and how they will function. Think of it as the control panel for each block you created on your template. You will have access to everything from the font size and color to the position of the block.

There are five types of blocks used in the creation of a template. A link to their functions can be found in the How to Use and What to Know About the PDFLib Block Tool Article

Each filed will have 5-6 tabs, each with a different purpose.

mceclip1.png

1. Settings

Settings will control what kind of variable you are working with, as well as the name of the variable and whether it should be seen and interacted with by the user.

  • Field Type: The type of input this will be.
    • For PDF Text fields: Available field types: Checkbox, Multi-Select list, Pull-Down Menu, Radio Buttons, Text Box, Text Area (multi-line).
    • For PDF Image fields: Available field types: Image Library menu, User Image Upload, Image Asset menu, generated Barcode image.
  • Required: Mark the field as required. For text input fields, the text must be entered. For menu/radio fields any item except the first must be chosen.
  • Hidden: This field is not shown to the user. Usually used for field linking, field blocks, or to include static text into the PDF.
  • Character Limit: The maximum number of characters that can be entered into a Text field.
  • Enable Date Picker: Turns the field into a date field with a configurable pop-up calendar. (*see below for settings).
  • Field Usage:
    • Proof & Production- Field content displays on both the Proof & Production PDFs.
    • Proof Only- Field content displays on your Proof PDF only.
    • Production Only- Field content displays on your Production PDF only.
    • Field Filling- The field does not display on your PDFs. Used for field linking or field block filling.
  • Field Caption: The caption that describes your field to the user.
  • Field Value: A pre-defined value for the field that you set (not for images). The user can override this.
  • Profile Fields: A pop-up list of fields from the user's profile you can embed in the Field Value.
  • Bar/QR Code: Available for image fields only when Field Type is set to Barcode (QR/128). Use the Edit link to set the type of barcode and the fields used to generate it.
  • Save: Saves changes to these settings. Settings are also saved when you switch tabs but it's a good idea to get into the habit of using the Save button.

* Date Picker settings:

  • {Format=mm-dd-yy} The format can be a combination of the following:
    • d - day of the month (no leading zero)
    • dd - day of the month (two digits)
    • o - day of the year (no leading zeros)
    • oo - day of the year (three-digit)
    • D - day name short
    • DD - day name long
    • m - the month of the year (no leading zero)
    • mm - the month of the year (two digits)
    • M - month name short
    • MM - month name long
    • y - year (two digits)
    • yy - year (four digits)
  • {LeadTime=0} Setting to 0 indicates no lead time. Positive numbers increase the lead time; negative allow dates in the past.
  • {EndTime=365} Setting to 365 allows dates to be selected up to 1 year in the future. Increasing or decreasing changes the latest date that can be selected.
  • {AllowWeekends=No} Setting to Yes or No will allow or not allow weekend days to be chosen.

2. Formatting

Formatting will control how the variable will look and feel. You can even format the way various things will function such as first letter capital, and rest lower case. If your open-type font has features that come with it, these will be accessible here.

There are Different formatting options if you are using an image-based block like Images, Graphics, or PDFs

  • Font: Select a font from your font library for this field. If no font is selected, Helvetica will be used.
  • Size: Set font size in points.
  • Alignment: Set the alignment of the text. Options are (PDF) Default, Left, Center, Right, and Justify.
  • B, I, U: Force font to be Bold, Italic or Underlined (May not be supported by all fonts).
  • Feature: OpenType fonts only. Some OpenType fonts contain certain features (small caps, fractions, stylistic sets, etc.). If features are available, you can choose one here.
  • Edit User Controls: Click to set up user font controls for the field which override the field's settings.
    • Allowed Fonts- Multi-Select list of your fonts from the Font Library that the user is allowed to choose from.
    • Allowed Font Sizes- Comma-separated list of font sizes the user can choose from.
    • Allowed Font Features- Font features the user can choose from
      • Bold
      • Italic
      • Underlined
    • Font Color Palette- Choose one of your pre-defined color palettes to display to the user.
    • Allowed Text Alignment- Text alignment the user can choose from
      • (L)eft Left alignment
      • (C)enter Centered
      • (R)ight Right Alignment
      • (J)ustified Justified (in Textflow fields only)
  • Color" Choose the color in RGB, CMYK, or Spot (Pantone) format for this field.
    • RGB values are from 0 - 255
    • CMYK is from 0 to 100%
    • Pantone colors are formatted like PANTONE 281 U. For a list of supported spot color names, open a PDF in Acrobat, use the PDFLib block tool and draw a block on the PDF. Expand "Rectangle", click in the white box next to the background color, click the "..." button to the right, select "Separation" from the pull-down, and click on the "Choose" button next to Spot Color Name. This value can then be entered into the Spot section of the field in MOD. To add a tint value, add :tint=# to the end of your spot color name where # is a decimal value between 0 and 1 (0 to 100%). 
      • Note: If your spot color is not recognized, you will also need to add an alternate color using :alt=CMYK a b c d (where a b c and d are the CMYK values from 0.0 to 1.0)  to the end of your spot color name.
  • Overprint: Create text which will overprint other page contents instead of knocking it out. Textline fields only.
  • User Controls: Turn on to allow the user to choose things like fonts, colors, etc. for their text.
  • Horizontal Scale: +/- percentage. Default 100%.
  • Character Spacing: +/- amount. Default 0.
  • Word Spacing: +/- amount. Default 0.
  • Leading: Textflow fields only. Adjust the leading for your text block.
  • Text Fit: Options- 
    • Clip: Clip text at the end of the field.
    • Entire: Scale text to fill the field entirely.
    • Meet: Scale text proportionality to fill the field entirely.
    • Nofit: Clip text at the beginning and end of the field.
    • Slice: Fill as much as possible while retaining the aspect ratio.
    • Auto: Attempts to fit/scale text (Default).
  • Adjust Text: Options- 
    • Clip: Clip text at the end of the field. 
    • Nofit: The last word will be moved to the next line. 
    • Shrink: Long text will shrink up to the Shrink Limit. 
    • Split: The last word will not move to the next line. The text will forcefully split.
    • Spread: The last word will be moved to the next line and the remaining (short) line will be justified by Expand Limit. 
    • Auto: The following methods are applied in order: Shrink, Spread, Nofit, Split. (Default)
  • Shrink Limit: Percentage of allowed shrinkage when Adjust Text is set to Shrink. Default 85%
  • Expand Limit: Percentage of allowed expansion when Adjust Text is set to Spread. Default 0%
  • Hyphen Char: Unicode hyphen character code (such as U+00AD) or 'none' to turn off auto-hyphenation.
  • Avoid Linebreaks: Check to avoid linebreaks when possible.
  • Formatting: Auto format text & numbers from user input. Input masks can be entered for fields such as phone numbers, dates, account codes, etc. Use the pull-down to choose pre-defined templates.
    • Masks: The following are characters used to build a mask
      • a - Represents an alpha character (A-Z,a-z)
      • 9 - Represents a numeric character (0-9)
      • * - Represents an alphanumeric character (A-Z,a-z,0-9)
      • ? - Used to symbolize that the remaining mask characters are optional (useful for phone extensions)
    • Text Case: Input text can be automatically corrected to the specified case. Options are:
      • ALL UPPER CASE
      • all lower case
      • First letter upper, rest lower case
      • fIRST LETTER LOWER, REST UPPER
      • First Letter Of Each Word Upper Case
      • First letter upper case, rest whatever
      • first letter lowercase, rest whatever
      • First two letters upper case, rest whatever
  • Tabs: Textflow fields only. Define horizontal tab positioning for tab (\t) characters.
    • Relative: The position will be advanced by the amount specified in Tab Size
    • Typewriter: The position will be advanced to the next multiple of Tab Size
    • Ruler: The position will be advanced to the n-th tab value in the Ruler option, where n is the number of tabs found in the line so far. If n is larger than the number of tab positions the Relative method will be applied.
      • Ruler tab positions are defined as comma-separated values of position and alignment. Position values can be absolute or percentages. Alignment can be left, right, center, or decimal. If the decimal is chosen, the Align char will be used to align the tabs. e.g.A sample ruler for 3 tab stops would look like 10 left, 20 left, 30 right.
  • Block Rotation: Rotation angle in degrees by which the Block will be rotated counter-clockwise around the lower-left corner.
  • Image Rotation: Orientates image in block to top (0°), right (90°), bottom (180°), or left (270°).
  • Copy This Formatting To…: You can mass update other fields of the same type with the same formatting as this field.
  • Save: Save the changes to these settings. Settings are also saved when you switch tabs but it's a good idea to get into the habit of using the Save button.
  • Image/PDF field formatting:
    • Image Fit Method Choose how images are sized to your image field.
      • Unchanged: The image is placed in the field unchanged but may expand outside of the field.
      • Auto Scale: The image is shrunk horizontally to fit.
      • Fill Unscaled: The image is scaled so it fills the field entirely. This will generally cause distortion.
      • Fit to Scale: The image is scaled so that it fits entirely into the field while preserving its aspect ratio.
      • Clip: The image is placed in the field unchanged and anything that lies outside of the field is clipped off.
      • Scale then Clip: The image is scaled so that it entirely covers the field while preserving the aspect ratio and making sure that at least one dimension of the object is fully contained in the field.

PDFlib_API_Reference_9.0.2_-_Google_Chrome_2020-08.png

  • Background Color Choose the color in RGB, CMYK, or Spot (Pantone) format for this field.
    • RGB values are from 0 - 255
    • CMYK is from 0 to 100%
    • Pantone colors are formatted like PANTONE 281 U. For a list of supported spot color names, open a PDF in Acrobat, use the PDFLib block tool and draw a block on the PDF. Expand "Rectangle", click in the white box next to the background color, click the "..." button to the right, select "Separation" from the pull-down, and click on the "Choose" button next to Spot Color Name. To add a tint value, add :tint=# to the end of your spot color name where # is a decimal value between 0 and 1 (0 to 100%). 
      • Note: If your spot color is not recognized, you will also need to add an alternate color using :alt=CMYK a b c d (where a b c and d are the CMYK values from 0 to 100)  to the end of your spot color name.
  • Horizontal Scale +/- percentage. Default 100%.
  • Border Width Border in px around your image.
  • Border Color Choose the color in RGB, CMYK, or Spot (Pantone) format for this field. RGB values are from 0 - 255, CMYK is from 0 to 100%, and Pantone is formatted like PANTONE 281 U. For a list of supported spot color names, use the PDFLib block tool. Create a block with the PDFlib Block tool, go to General, background-color, click "..." , select "Separation" color space, and click on "..." at Spot color name.
  • Horizontal Scale +/- percentage. Default 100%.
  • Rotation/Around Rotation angle in degrees by which the Block will be rotated counter-clockwise around your chosen point.
  • Copy This Formatting To… You can mass-update other fields of the same type with the same formatting as this field.
  • Save Save the changes to these settings. Settings are also saved when you switch tabs but it's a good idea to get into the habit of using the Save button.

3. Linking 

This tab allows you to add custom formatting to your variable and is most used with textlines. For example, you can add a prefix or even extra characters before and after a textline by linking itself and adding these in the text area box provided. These elements will then be added to whatever is typed into the variable input field.

  • Linking Rule - Combine text and other template fields into one field for more complex output.
    • Use this rule when you want to combine several user input fields or add static text to user fields.
    • The output of this rule is not displayed to the user, it will be passed to your PDF Template.
    • For example, to display "Ph: 555-1234" in your PDF when the user types in "555-1234" into your Phone field, your Link rule would look like Ph: {Phone}
    • Field formatting/Settings for this field apply to the entire link rule.
  • Don't apply when blank - This rule will not be applied if the field is left blank.
  • Save - Save the changes to these settings. Settings are also saved when you switch tabs but it's a good idea to get into the habit of using the Save button.

mceclip0.png

mceclip1.png

4. Textflow Designer 

This tab is available to textflow blocks and has two main functions. 

  • Allows for the organization of textlines to build the structure of where variables will go. Placing variables side by side will display them next to each other on the product. You can use the EzMerge Fields link in the bottom right to quickly add variable names to the Textflow Designer.

mceclip2.png

  • Has the same functionality as the Linking Tab. If you would like to use the Textflow designer in place of the linking tab, you will need to set the font, size, color, and any other formatting element of the Textflow for the extra element to adopt. 

mceclip3.png

One of the other key features of the Textflow designer is to manipulate when an element should or should not show. We can use the <optional> and </optional> tags to accomplish this.

  • Block - Combine text and other template fields (while retaining their field/formatting settings) into one field for more complex output.
    • Use this rule when you want to combine several user input fields, each with its own formatting, or to add static text to output.
    • When using this feature, this field should be set to "hidden" since its contents are computed and not entered by the user.
    • The output of this rule is not displayed to the user, it will be passed to your PDF Template.
    • <optional></optional> If text with a variable (Template Field) is placed in the optional tag, it will not be displayed if the template field is blank. Optional tags cannot be nested.
    • For example, to display "Ph: 555-1234" in your PDF when the user types in "555-1234" into your Phone field, your Block rule would look like {PhonePrefix} {Phone}. In this case, a hidden template field called PhonePrefix would be set to the color blue and the value would be Ph:. A text field (set to Field Filling) called Phone would be set to the color green.
    • Each template field { } will display with its own field settings/formatting. All other static text will display with this field's settings/formatting.
  • Eliminate Blank Lines - If an entire line is blank, it will be eliminated and the text will shift up.
  • Vertical Alignment - Choose how you want your text to be vertically aligned in your block.
  • Save - Save the changes to these settings. Settings are also saved when you switch tabs but it's a good idea to get into the habit of using the Save button.

5. Position

The Position Tab allows for Precise control of where your variable fields will be located on the PDF. We recommend having static data on the PDF such as name and address on the initial upload to assist in lining up your variable fields perfectly. By default, the position of which the blocks were drawn with the PDFLib Block tools will be used. We recommend you can check the "Override Block Position from the PDF Template" option to input your own position coordinates. 

mceclip0.png

  • PDF Block Type  - The type of input this will be.
    • For Text fields: Available field types: Checkbox, Muli-Select list, Pull-Down menu, Radio Buttons, Text Box, Text Area (multi-line).
    • For Image fields: Available field types: Image Library menu, User Image Upload, Image Asset menu, generated Barcode image.
    • For PDF fields: Available field types: User PDF Upload, Image Asset menu.
  • Block Location - Page number of the PDF where this block is located.
  • Page Height/Width - The size of the first PDF page in inches.
  • Override Block Position from PDF Template - Check to override the block's position set in the PDF.
    • Measurement - Set measurement units to Points, Inches, or Centimeters.
    • Left/Top inputs will shift the variable from the left or the top by the desired measurement. So 30 points from the left will show farther to the right than 10 points from the left.
      • Left - Leftmost block position
      • Top - Topmost block position
    • Width/Height inputs allow you to resize the block
      • Width - Width of block
      • Height - Height of block
  • Save - Save the changes to these settings. Settings are also saved when you switch tabs but it's a good idea to get into the habit of using the Save button.

6. Script 

The script field is for custom scripts to enhance or change some smaller functionality of the block to fit your needs. If you have someone who is skilled in the script, this is one of the places to use it.

 

Related articles

Powered by Zendesk