Understanding Translate Print Control

The need for the 400 indexer to interpret printer carriage control characters in the input data stream arises from the fact that some data can be very difficult to index if the number of lines of data varies greatly from document to document.

This often occurs with names and addresses, some of which might have one or two lines for the name and then one or two lines for the street address. Proper trigger values can be impossible to find, making indexing impossible. However, the solution is simple, since printer carriage control characters (such as a 0 (zero) for double space and a - (dash) for triple space) often cause the data to print consistently on the same lines from document to document, even if the data does not occur consistently on the same lines within the input.

Translate print control (TRANSLATEPRINTCONTROL=YES or NO) enables the indexing of reports in these circumstances. When translate print control is set to yes, the 400 indexer takes the input data for a page and rather than process it line by line, it reads the page buffer and creates a secondary view of the page. This secondary view of the page has each line of data placed as it would be on the printed page, after having interpreted (or translated) the carriage control characters.

The following table is a short example of what the raw and translated page buffers look like. The first column of the data field is the printer carriage control character.

Raw buffer Translated buffer

Table 1. Raw and translated page buffers
Raw buffer	Translated buffer
`Line Data 1 1 2 0 3 Bill Smith 4 0 123 First St. 5 0 Somewhere, NC 28105 6 22334455`	`Line Data 1 1 2 0 3 4 Bill Smith 5 0 123 First St. 6 7 0 Somewhere, NC 28105 8 9 22334455`
`Line Data 1 1 2 0 3 John Smith 4 456 Second Ave. 5 Appt 5C 6 0 Somewhere, NC 28105 7 23456677`	`Line Data 1 1 2 0 3 4 John Smith 5 456 Second Ave. 6 Appt 5C 7 0 Somewhere, NC 28105 8 9 23456677`

Line Data
1    1
2    0
3       Bill Smith
4    0  123 First St.
5    0  Somewhere, NC 28105
6       22334455

Line Data
1    1
2    0
3
4       Bill Smith
5    0  123 First St.
6
7    0  Somewhere, NC 28105
8
9       22334455

Line Data
1    1
2    0
3       John Smith
4       456 Second Ave.
5       Appt 5C
6    0  Somewhere, NC 28105
7       23456677

Line Data
1    1
2    0
3
4       John Smith
5       456 Second Ave.
6       Appt 5C
7    0  Somewhere, NC 28105
8
9       23456677

Note that the TRANSLATEPRINTCONTROL parameter must be added manually to your indexer parameters by clicking the Keyboard radio button and then the Modify button in the Parameters Source area of the Indexer Information page of your Content Manager OnDemand Application definition.