Element <FILE>
Contents
FILE is a type of group that normally displays a PAGE of a file specified by the FILENAME attribute. Sections of a page may also be incorporated by adding attributes to define a "clip region": see CLIP attribute. The file format may be PCL, PDF, PostScript, Epson ESCP, DCX, PCX, BMP, DICOM, IMG, JPEG, PNG, TIFF, TXT etc. 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).
To encapsulate binary data (for example from an image file) "in-line" rather than as an external file, use ENCODING = "BASE64".
If an IDF script contains an empty FILE element:
<FILE />
then on opening, 
EscapeE displays the 'Input file name' dialog so that you may choose which FILENAME to use. Alternatively, you may supply the missing FILENAME on the command line, e.g.:
ESCAPEE c:\Catalogs\Spring.idf,Special4
This is a convenient method of customizing a document without editing its IDF code directly.
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".
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"/>
Attributes
Links: