Soft and hard resources

Resources are considered hard or soft depending on how they are used.

Soft resources

Soft resources are resources that are included on a page but not mapped. Soft resources are integrated into the page data that is then sent to the printer.

Hard resources

Hard resources are sent to the printer in advance of the page as a separate resource object. They are mapped and only sent to the printer the first time they are referenced.

If a resource is used by more than a single page in the document, it might be beneficial for you to use the resource as a hard resource. Before it is used, a hard resource is referenced with a Map structured field in the active environment group of the page in which it is used.