Notes on new features

Notes on the new features of SCS and many other documents can be viewed through this link:

http://www.newspapersystems.com/products/classpag/faq.php#manuals

Here's the link to the new features:

http://www.newspapersystems.com/products/classpag/manuals/SCS_ClspagNewFeatures.ppt

Final words

Cooperative effort. Feedback is important for what to do and priority of actions.

Next year may be in Macungie, may be elsewhere.

Mop-up session with Gary and Susan

Double Trucks
What is a DT? It may be 2 pages plus one column, 2 pages plus less than a column, or 2 pages.

In setup, product configuration menu, number of columns, min, max. If you are going to do DT, the max columns should be big enough to accommodate the width. If your DT size is less than an integral number of columns, you want to modify the width of the center "gutter" column. The "Margins between pages when printing" setup page contains the entry for double truck column width so you can change it here, putting only the gutter width.

Modify photodef, eps, col msr, there is a max size for command parameters. So that DT objects such as folios and banners will not collapse, you need to make this big enough. 127p should be big enough for anything.

(on same screen, ad dump column depth is the minimum depth for segmented ad segments. If you're saying only ads with depth of over 2 inches can wrap, set this value to 2 inches.)

Now adjust your page size. Left page, edit the page, column adjust put 11 in "right". Right page, edit the page, column adjust, put -10 in "left".

You may need a new device to receive the double-truck size output. You also need to know if your ad creation system can create a true DT size ad.

Scotch double truck is not all columns from both pages, but more than one page's worth. Some DT also do not use all vertical space. In this case you want to make sure the center column has a space reservation to keep liners from falling into it, because you don't want liners in the gutter.

Folios
Will be covered in more depth in training. There is a ClassPag variable names document which has a long list of all the variables that can be included in any composition command. Jump boxes, banner text, folios, live index. Also includes function definitions and examples.

Folios are found in Misc, Create folios. Dialog box comes up, choice of quit, rebuild, setdate, setposition. Setposition is what we will use.

Two pieces to folios: the position information, and the composition commands or graphic references to build it. To change the position of the folio, highlight the folio entry in question, hit F12, and select "edit position." You get to the bottom part of the screen. Your X and Y positions control the position just like a plotter with 0,0 in the lower left. You can use negative numbers. You can also use a rotation angle on your folio.

If you are editing and lose it entirely, make the X and Y values both 5i (do a five by five) which will put it in the middle and then you can inch it around to the right position.

When you want to test something without destroying existing folios, try copying the current folio and apply it to a different new edition.

How do we change from book name to section name. Hit return on the folio entry and look for the string "BookName". Change that to "SectionName".

The triangle are alt-[ and alt-] (alt key then press the [).

PDF files of interface

Interface document

Linage Report

SpiceRAQ

In the ClassPag reports menu at the bottom is a new item. SpiceRAQ reports.

SpiceRAQ has been available for a long time but William made it more available as of version 5.66. It can now be launched from within ClassPag.

A user can view and run the report.

Someone can run SpiceRAQ separately and run the reports without running ClassPag.

Creating a report
Press insert to create a report.

There will be a amenu on the left side, go down the menu items to reae yor report.

Form Size
Data Tables: pick a table, you are given a choice of many tables. Name and description is displayed on the screen.

Field Selection
Data that will be in the report. Press insert and select fields. AS you select fields SR will show you a dialog. You do not have to change anything in that dialog if you do not want to; this is automatically formatting the field to fit on the screen in order left to right as you add them. If you insert a field when a field other than the last one is selected, it inserts the field below the field selected.

You can stop here and exit and save when prompted. Now your report can be viewed from the reports dialog.

You can also change the data appearance with length and data type.

Headings
Select the field and enter. You can click on the "heading" button and put text in the text box. This will be the column heading for the field.

"Headings and footings" allows you to enter header and footer for the entire report. This can include dynamic elements such as date.

Tabulations
Summary data. You could show area used.

Sorting
You can change the sort key. Multiple sort levels are allowed, you can go as deep as you want to. You can select a group summary for the sort.

Export table
This outputs the file to a csv format. You have to click the export button, put in the name. You need AppLauncher (and Excel) if you want to View. This is a simple PC application, download from the SCS support website, unzip and follow instructions to install.

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There's more than is shown here. When you purchase SpiceRAQ it includes training.

Filtering
You can filter on the data as well.

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You can link databases together, select the second database and respond "yes" to the link. You then choose the key to link the databases together. Edit segments, from table, select field name, do this once for each table.

Chris suggests doing your report incrementally, adding one field or a couple of fields at a time, make a change and run, rather than making many changes and finding you have an error and then having to figure out which of the changes you made caused the error.

Keith and the AdMax people know a lot about this product; they use it more than the ClassPag people at this time. But they are getting into it more deeply. It has been around for a long time. It is more recently applied more to ClassPag.

SpiceRAQ is new to the ClassPag environment and is not included in first round of contracts with any current users. Cost is $3000. Built-in reports are separate from this and do not cost extra. The engine for this drives all the reports but this is the ability to create your own reports.

This compares timewise with Crystal Reports as faster by a factor of 60.

Reporting

A handout was handed out (surprise) describing the following:

Report of missing ads (all books)
Report of missing ads with names (all books)
Report of incorrectly sized ads
Report of conflicts
Report of missing ads
Report of missing ads with names
Report of incorrectly sized ads
Report of ads by sort key


Unordered filler report
Often used to determine which auto fillers come up a lot, may signal which fillers might be overused.

Filler report
As above. May also be helpful in determining which sizes the paginators use most often so more variety may be provided.

Ordered filler report
Fillers scheduled to run.

Post filler report
statistics from the current session are posted into a central database. You can set the pagination to prompt to save statistics on exit. You can delete entries by date from right-click when in the list of session statistics.

View Run stats
Updates a dataabase that tracks sizes, bannrs used and so on. Can clear out as with others.

Duplicated ads
Run this from the Import menu, Ad Size Report

SpiceRAQ Reports
Design custom reports

Additional stuff

When you create an ad and save it, it may give an error because it has saved it and then printed it, because of the position of the print icon button. Escape out, this is a bug.

Product config, classified heading placement. If you set "place over display ads" as false, "Place on first display ad if no liners," set to N.

Headers are partially controlled by Classified Heading Placement screen. To pof col, place parent at top, spli wide headers, repeat wide headers. Also in banners setup, Class 10000 must have 1000 in squareoff (first four char). Split overflow, F, C, P, or M.

You can have different first and subsequent heads. One M type header then C headers after it. Or M type then R type.

Main and sub, one C type then M type.

Susan Strain has documented these setups including ones that didn't ever work. She will put it up on the site for us to use.

Merging sortfiles. How does it know it's getting two different eps files from two differen sources? Display ad directory has to be the CCI location because of subdirectories. All others go in alternate ad directories.

CCI ads are auto segmented without having to specify it in the segmented ad field.

New Features! Part 2.

Pages marked as final.
Now they show as final even if printed in a different scale. Final Output device in the paper definition form, there is a default spread that can be set so if you always print all pages or one page, you can set this.

In the spread you can

Column Balancing

In product config expert you can set column balancing to set randomizing, either as M or N. Works up to 4-digit. It takes classification and then by subsort takes the largest of those subsort ads and puts in upper leftmost column, next largest next to it, goes across by size towards the upper left within that subsort.

Replate Count

New method for adding replate marks in folios, macro "ReplateCount". Can be used in page naming and in printer scripting.

Enhanced Folios
Begin and end classes, first or last word in ad if you use their ad system. Conditional telephone book style folio e.g. "James-Jones".

Password Aging
If you install checkpw in $TOOLS and enable it to suid to root. checkpw requires this in order to read the shadow password file. Allows you to check and see when your password expires, or change on demand.

Expendable Classes
If a class doesn't need to run, set randomize to X to mark as expendable. It finds the largest class that will take up your overflow area and get rid of it to bring other ads in. This works through a dialog.

Update Banner Sizes
If you have new banners with same names you can rightclick and choose "Update sizes from ePS" to update the sizes in the databases from the sizes from the Bounding Box. You can select "class heads only" if you have other banners that are intentionally resized.

Lots of Logs
Session log tells more about each pagination session.
Date and time stamps in the log file list.
Not every entry or file has a timestamp.
You can see the fonts used by composition via logs. Logfile, fonts used by composition, shows you the list of fonts. View puts you in EMACS. Print sends to default printer named REPORT. Select allows you to choose a printer.
Access logs tell you a lot. Ads killed, who killed it, when, what product.
Print queue submission log applies to Linux print queues on this printer. FTP session log shows FTP session information.
/u/cpag/root/log is the location of these files. cp /dev/null ftpmac.log to clear.
CPO is in the menu but won't do anything if not installed.

Squareoff Enhancements
Target Class & Sortkey. Will put it near the target class. Target field set.
Width used to be a suggestion. Now if you set the width and change in product config expert the display ad dummying styles, expand squareoffs to width set to Y. Will make it bigger if necessary.
Can put more than one sqoff on a page, in sqoff menu, pack in any column on page Y.
Color rules outside a squareoff. Setup is in second page of squareoff screen, cmybg. In paper sizes there is a new WEPS which will widen the EPS to include gutters so that an exported sqoff alone will not lose this rule.
In sqoff can set minimum ad area per sqoff, if it is smaller than the anded conditions of count and size, it will not square off, it will run in column.
Rules within the squareoff -- now you can have them off in the pagination and on in the squareoff. Cut rules are now independent. Within the squareoff record, vertical Y/N, inner rules, add leading. Also you must go to the Ad Configuration and adjust the rules within there, setting the location type to BANNER.
If you do not want class head under banner, but do want it in conditional in-column, you need to select KIL not NO under "Place headers under banners".
They are trying to use the word Squareoff instead of synonyms.
When moving a squareoff, sometimes the displays got left behind. It is now much more consistent. It does rebuild it in the new place. With luck in future it will be treated as one unit.
More columns in the squareoff list with more information.
More tools in the toolbar.
Using the toolbar to modify width it shows which banners are available.
Backgound images for squareoffs. Setup in banners setup, type R for request (squareoff), top, bottom and background type, backgroundposition back, color spot, external name might be of a tiny PS or EPS file of one color. Logos should be tested because you want to make sure the white areas in the logo are white, not the background color.



Admin power point: To print your list to postscript.

New Features! Part one.

Context sensitive field help.

Press shift-F1. Version 5.60 will have this help available. When you set up product configuration expert, if you click on a field and press shift-F1, you get context sensitive help. It may be textual or graphical; graphical PDFs must be downloaded to your server for graphical help to be available. Right-click still shows you the choices for a field. Brian McCasland has created a lot of these screens.

When in the setup menu, you choose "View Manuals" and select "view" it will go to newspapersystems.com to find the manual files. You can select "view local" to get ones from the server.

Pressy Schroyer is updating the manuals. Admin guide updated, How-To will be updated in the next few weeks.

Remove old records
Product configuration expert F12, remove old records, removes records in all databases that are for products that do not exist in the product database. Does not touch records that are associated with still-existing products.

Class translations
There is now a procedure where you can use a .CSV file to take the old classes and translate to new classes.

"View class translations" from F12 in class listing at beginning of pagination or when viewing classes.

Specify it in the control record in the same place as the class nesting specification (page 2). Type is TRAN. Request S (suggested) or U (unconditional). Can set for each pagination per day of week for example.

Copy dialog
Expanded information including where a particular user IP pagination was copied from, and the merge directories can be viewed. Merge directory date is shown as "age" when extracting. Screen 25, bottom, age in hours will configure when the date will show in red.

Product Config Expert

Now you can go to the product configuration screen you want by name rather than paging up and down.

Tips
Configurable.

Customer and Notes fields
These can be passed by your ad order entry system. Customer may be name or number. Notes information about the ad e.g. "we really want this on page 4."
CCI default sends these. Make sure no hard returns!

Display fillers from AoE
Fillers can be received in the classsrt.out file as agate, display, both, neither.
Richard notes, there is another interface available to ClassPag where you can launch ad order entry system, re-edit and retransmit ad with AdMax.

Product config "Ad and Class Conversions (continued)"

Lock Ads On Exit
Outext export (continued) field "save work area on exit":
T save with current locks,
F no ask
L will ask if you want to lock ads before saving.

If you choose L, on exit you have a choice of locking all ads on exit, lock display ads, keep current locks, or cancel save.

Import area improvements
"In use" shows who is using it.

Import control expanded

Background color on ads
Can apply color. column 140 is "Y" for the background color.
Position request field can have code "BC same as enterinig a "Y" in column 140.
Multiple colors -- background request has two entries, so you can alternate. Possibilties for gray on a non-color page.
Knockout behind logos but not letters.
Could be good for Valentine's for example.
Color needs to be light enough to read over.

Merge directory control
Can uncheck to opt out of importing a merge directory contents.
Note: the check boxes control. If you say "no" to the dialog box, it imports the merge directory anyway.
Product configuration "Ad Importing" screen, "has merge directories". "Process merge directories" means there's another program that does your ad composition, there is an import command specified. Otherwise you don't want this.

Preplacing Display Ads
Rapid entry form for Ad Requests, multiple ads all at once typed in. Before clicking "accept" click on the "ad request" button. You can right click and sort by ad number with customers. Or sort by size, large ones probably placed. Enter the ad number, page column, position (shows the code and description), target ad, then click "add". When done click "back".

It will detect conflicts and when the page is too full.

Now these positions are written to database and preserved, so keep current locks will preserve the position when exiting. You can then bring up the pagination again (another zone even) and copy these positions from save file

KY Display Ad Placement
Can use KY position request for keyed ads. Places keyed ads in order by their sort key along the bottom of the page rather than by size.

Banner with index and dink ad
Can place ear ad on top of the banner.
Right click on ad, convert to dink, select the banner, it re-generates with confirms.

Index with banner reference
Can point to banner.

XML output module

Does not have as much in it as an outext file. This is an extra charge module, talk to Phil Curtolo. Specification handout is available.

NoMachine setup

NoMachine is equivalent to WebTermX. You can use it to run ClassPag or to run CP2O. SCS is a licensed reseller for this product.

You buy NoMachine per server; client is free. It will even allow you to see your server GUI. It is faster in any network environment.

There is a trial with two free clients; small business 5, enterprise unlimited.

Frank Warnke has more detail on setting this up.

New product - CP2O (Classified Pagination to Output)

Sit in this program and monitor it. Shows the following (configurable to include or exclude each category):

pages with missing images
pages with missized images
pages with errors
output pages
all pages

Shows product, edition, pub date, page, status, submitted. Status is most important column on this display.

Double-click on the page and it shows the list of ads on the page, and the status of those ads. You can change this view to other pages easily if you are focusing on one product but multiple pages.

Statuses are Output, Incomplete, Error. Error typically means a printing or output error, may be a new print device that isn't ready yet, failed FTP, similar problem. You can open the log from this screen.

When a page goes from failure to ready, it is automatically output. You can force an output for an error page with the Output button. If you don't want the page going even when it's ready, you can hold it with the Hold button. You can remove the page from the program completely. You can purge pages older than x days or with a particular date. Purge dialog applies to all pages in future, it is not a one-shot. Purge happens at night, typically around midnight. It is part of an existing cron job.

List can be sorted and filtered. Any place you see a list, you can sort and filter.

To use this app, paginators send to a different printer. They do not have to wait for the pages to be ready. They can close and go on to the next pagination.

If you have further questions speak with Phil Curtolo.


(they also showed NoMachine, an alternative to WebTermX. Produces much better over low-speed lines. Often abbreviated NX.)

Wide screen ClassPag (and other tips) with Chris Wolfe and Susan Strain

Wide screen is currently in the product. If you have wide screen and a current version, you have this feature.

New ad list stays open, does not go away. It has more information than in the non-wide screen version. Because it stays open you have more freedom to manipulate it. You can sort by columns.

You can also use a filter to zero in on the data you want. Right click on the column with the data you want to filter with. Select your criteria. You can save the filter as well. A filter that is saved is available to all paginators and is available within all paginations.

Filters can contain multiple selection criteria.

Filters are available even in non-wide screen paginations.

Ad details include the same information, but it is more logically organized.

There are tabs. You can see page information with the page tab. If you want to see page information for multiple pages you can easily page through.

There is a paper tab.

There is an ad chart which contains statistical data visually presented (pie chart).

Dell 24 inch widescreen, Mac 20 inch screen have been tested. Below 21 inches might be too small.

How do we enable wide screen?
In your webtermx shortcut, you will have a command

/u/cpag/menprof.sh

change it to

/u/cpag/menprof.sh 172

and that's it!

They do not support a vertically oriented screen for the time being.

Hovering over an ad you will get an "AdTip" (like a ToolTip) with information about the ad. This helps you locate an ad without clicking. Again this is available in non-wide screen. Configurable.

Question was asked about locating an ad on its current paginated location from the ad list easily. There is a six-step process currently which will do this. They are strongly considering making it easier.

The six-step process:
click find ad
right-click and choose either "search for display ads" or "search for line ads"
right-click and choose "search for an ad"
type in the ad number and press enter
right-click and choose "find page number"
go to this ad? click "yes"

SCS User Group Macungie PA, Opening Remarks

Kurt Jackson welcomed us to the User Group. We all introduced ourselves at various volume levels.

Richard Cichelli then offered his warm welcome. He reassured us that he and Martha still come to work every day.

He praised the brains of the people in the room. Richard feels we need dummies at every level of the newspaper business.

He shared his secret of success, which is to pay people to work with him.

Hard Launch Day 2

Some fun, some fear, but it all came out right in the end.

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I had put the XML output into its own printer definition, so that the users would do all their pagination and output , and then do the XML output at the end. We had planned to incorporate this into our final output printer definitions once every pagination had some CCI ads in it. We made the change this afternoon, copying the output into the XMLPaginationReport folder on the CCI server as well as a backup location. The initial output has a pagination status of 3 for all ads; this means "in progress." At 1am we run a cron job that takes the backup file and recopies it with the pagination status changed to 10 or "published" into the XMLPaginationReport folder again.

I had forgotten to set the "write ad list" parameter to X and put the file name in the ad list name area, so I was getting zero-length XML files. Gary fortunately found the problem and we got it all straightened out.

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21 CCI ads did not make it into the extraction. Because of the difficulty in creating them one by one if there is no matching class and sort, I edited the classsrt.out file manually to add them in as display ads. Then we brought the eps files in one by one by pointing the ad records to the CCI folder containing the ads by ad name.

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We had some confusion about the merge files. I have been using symbolic links to existing folders because of the difficulty of getting the CCI and Sii files together in the same folder. I pointed to the wrong folder for the Sii files, but it looked correct because an erroneous extraction from Sii had been made the previous week, so the files that had been there were one week old. I should have noticed the problem in the dates with the new merge list that comes up in ClassPag, but I didn't, and this cost us time before we noticed the problem. We were looking at duplicate ads and wondering why things didn't look right. Moral: always pay attention to the merge list and check the dates assiduously.

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We plan tomorrow to pull out the proofs from one week ago to make sure we aren't missing anything in our pagination "furniture". We copied our existing paginations but there have been some changes since then that could trip us up. Our paginators have good memories but it is better not to depend on that when checking to make sure everything is exactly right in the new pagination.

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I only had a couple of minutes where I actually lost my ability to think.

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-JoAnne

Hard Launch at Baltimore Sun

Our first day with the merge went reasonably well. Some notes:

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Our legacy system, Sii, had been modified to accept another field, the new classification field, e.g. the five-digit classification such as 40100, 40150, 40200 and so on for Employment, for example. The field is just a type-in field and is not validated against a table of known good classes. As a result we got a few bogus classes which caused problems in pagination. It was clear that we had bad classes because they appear in the class listing at the beginning of the pagination by number, rather than being inside the defined class super groupings with names (e.g. Auction, auto, etc.).

We addressed this in two ways: one, we went back and fixed the field in the affected ads, re-extracted, and paginated. Second, on an extraction which was running very late, I went in and modified the classsrt.out file manually to correct the erroneous class. However, there is no easy way to know if a keying error resulted in a classification that exists but is not correct for the ad until it is noticed or someone complains.

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The Death index process that we developed is sort of involved, and did not include all ads for some reason. SCS may be enlisted to help develop something better. It may involve parsing the ceps.out file to try to extract the first line with the deceased's name, or may involve having CCI output something we can use.

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Even one merged pagination took a lot of time. If we were to do this over again we might introduce only one at a time rather than three (Auto/Market, Deaths, Boats).

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Fonts have to be checked and rechecked at every CCI upgrade and change in procedure. You should do a full test all the way to output on any change. We discovered late that there are apparently two symbol fonts used on CCI, one in a dropdown, one in the font set. We had to install the second one (called just Symbol) quickly all along the proof and film output paths on the day of launch.

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Rather than trying to use the reports from SCS which never seem to have what we want, I have been creating a report generated from data extracted from the full-blown outext.txt file, imported into SQL server, then interpreted via Crystal Reports. This will soon be fully automated and we will be collecting daily data on all our paginations for future uses we might only imagine today. Given the current state of data availability from CCI, this might be an approach worthwhile for other properties.

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Test early and often! Courage!

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-JoAnne