Running EscapeE from the command line

(Applies to EscapeE Professional and EscapeE Batch Automation editions only)

Advanced users can run EscapeE from the command line of the program for batch or unattended usage. The Shortcut dialogue provides a convenient way of setting up options, see Shortcuts - the easy way to construct a command line. It is also possible to save a configuration as an *.INI file (use 'Save As...' from the Options | Configuration' dialogue) and invoke it later using the syntax:

ESCAPEE ^^configname

The name of a file may be specified on the command line and may be followed by options, e.g.:

ESCAPEE TEST.LSH /DISPLAY

in which case just this file is processed.

A wildcard specification may be given if desired, e.g.:

ESCAPEE *.PRN or ESCAPEE C:\TIFFS\

which is equivalent to ESCAPEE C:\TIFFS\*.LSH

To extract file data and incorporate it into the folder name you need to give an output file specification that includes an equals sign, which will be substituted by the data extracted from the field. For instance

escapee dir*.pcl /tiff /outspec s:\escapee\=\*.tif /mkdir

processes all PCL files with names starting with DIR and converts them to TIFFs, then puts the result in a folder dependent on the field.

The format, the input specification and the output specification are interconnected.
If a format is specified on the command line then any default output specification is ignored. For example, to create a PDF from the command line you need to specify the option explicitly:

ESCAPEE c:\temp\test.pcl /PDF

(Note that specifying ESCAPEE c:\temp\test.pcl just displays the file.)

The default input and output specifications are mainly of use in continuous (timed) mode.
If you specify an output format then you should also specify the input file name (or a wildcard spec) and if you wish to send the output to another folder you must also specify the /TO command (not /OUTSPEC which is merely the default, and therefore ignored in this case). E.g:

"C:\Program Files\RedTitan\software\ESCAPEE.EXE" ^^"c:\INIfiles\ideatiff.ini"c:\inputfile.pcl /TO c:\output\*.tif /BORDER 0 /TIFF /X

(The purpose of the /X command is "exit after processing the file or files specified on the command line".)

To send output to a printer, use the /PRINT command. For example,

ESCAPEE TEST.PRN /PRINT

would use the default printer, whereas

ESCAPEE TEST.PRN /PRINT 'My printer'

would use a printer named My printer. To ask the user to select a printer, use the ? option:

ESCAPEE TEST.PRN /PRINT ?

Further options may be appended, e.g.

ESCAPEE TEST.PRN /PRINT 'My printer,S'

scales the page to fit the paper.

The following topics define the syntax of the options:

Command line syntax

EscapeE configuration symbols

Tips:

•	EscapeE can cope with cases where fonts are downloaded with their characters interleaved, the Export format option 'PCL fonts as RFFs' will save them as separate RFFs with names derived from the font ID e.g. 1234RFF. To extract any downloaded fonts in HP download format choose 'PCL download fonts'.

•	If TIFF generation is selected and there are some fields selected, then a log file in CSV format will be generated. The first field (called FILENAME) contains the full file path of each generated TIFF image and the selected fields are extracted from the text for each page.