FILE is a type of group that normally displays a PAGE of a file specified by the FILENAME attribute. The file format can be PCL, PDF, PostScript, Epson ESCP, DCX, PCX, BMP, DICOM, IMG, JPEG, PNG, TIFF, RTF or TXT as well as IDF. The default format for files with non-standard extensions is PCL. See FILETYPE.

Files in any of these formats except TXT provide text-formatting details within the file. In a PCL file, however, PAPER, TRAY, BIN or PLEX attributes can be specified in the FILE tag to override these settings.

TXT format lacks pagination and text-formatting details (see Notes on text), so formatting attributes (FONT, FONTSIZE etc.) should be supplied by the IDF code. In the FILE tag, set FILETYPE attribute to "TEXT"; do not specify a PAGE number, but use PAGE="NEXT" (see also REPEAT).

Tip

EscapeE can treat plain text files as PCL, thereby applying default formatting and pagination for you: just set FILETYPE="PCL" instead of FILETYPE="TEXT".

Programming note

To encapsulate binary data (for example from an image file) "in-line" rather than as an external file, use

ENCODING = "BASE64"

Examples

<FILE FILENAME = "FRED2.PCL" PAGE="4"/>

<FILE FILENAME = "PHONE1.CSV" SEPARATOR=":"/>

<FILE FILENAME="Revisions.txt" FILETYPE="TEXT" FONT="Times New Roman" POINTSIZE="7" PAGE="NEXT"/>

▪FILE element example
Attributes

Links:

Element RTF

Element TEXT