Converter

LCDS print streams and resources are print files that contain proprietary print description language strings intended for very specific printer models. With the rise in popularity of PostScript and PCL, support for LCDS has almost disappeared on modern printers, leaving many users who embraced LCDS, with large investments of time, money and effort, modifying their host applications to include these LCDS strings. Converting these applications away from LCDS to an alternative is often prohibitively expensive. The PARIS Converter module protects that investment by ensuring that these LCDS print streams may be output to today’s PCL and Postscript printers, or produced electronically to be distributed as required. In addition to supporting these LCDS applications, PARIS Converter also allows you to enhance these same documents, so that they may incorporate the features available on modern output devices, such as full colour, True Type fonts, barcodes and multiple graphic formats.
 

Convert Once

Once the conversion has been performed, all future improvements and updates are achieved via the PARIS Designer WYSIWYG interface. No further changes to the LCDS source code is required.

Printer-Independent Resources

The PARIS Converter supports all LCDS resources including JDL, PDE, CME, FRM, FNT, IMG and LGO. Often, the original source is lost never to be found.  This is not a problem for PARIS Converter as it only requires the object code JDL and FRM files. Once converted, the LCDS resources are no longer required.

Fonts

During the conversion process, the PARIS Converter provides a mechanism to create font families from the source FNT fonts. If these fonts are to stay in use, then PARIS Designer accesses them as if they were TrueType or Adobe fonts. A further benefit is that only fonts that are actually required are converted, offering a good opportunity to tidy up the FNT font library. One of the greatest benefits of all is that once a LCDS application is converted to a PARIS Designer document, you have the ability to replace any bitmap font with TrueType or Adobe fonts as desired.

DJDE Processing

When all the resources have been converted into PARIS, the system is now ready to process print streams that contain DJDE (Dynamic Job Descriptor Entries). PARIS supports all major DJDE commands and for those that are not directly supported, there are generally equivalent, or improved, features in PARIS Designer that will give the desired result and more.