EscapeE is well known for its capability to take a file in a wide range of formats and directly output its equivalent in another format. EscapeE can, however, also output documents in an intermediate document description language, IDF. IDF files can be edited then output in your chosen format. This spares you the bother and expense of installing specialist programs for every format which you may need to edit.

EscapeE includes a feature to create a "Composite document" – a single document composed from a collection of other "component" documents. The component documents are just regular files such as PCL, PDF etc..

When the component documents are all entire files, a simple 'List Of Files' control file will suffice, see Creating a data control file. If you require just pages and/or parts of pages from any of the component documents, however, IDF control files provide the solution. Just open a new IDF file, sweep out the part of the page you want to use, then click Copy & Add section to IDF. You can add more clippings from this or other files to the same IDF document: just sweep and click. EscapeE does the coding to create the file for you: see Creating an IDF document. Composite IDF documents may be used as templates for new documents. Open the IDF file in EscapeE to view the document and display its code in the Console: see Editing an IDF document.

The IDF syntax section provides details on IDF code and notation but you don't need to be a programmer to edit a control file. The "plain English" nature of IDF elements and attributes make this a genuinely user-friendly format, see IDF editing tips.

See also IDF wizard documents

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Links

Data control files

IDF Documents

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