PRIMA 2e User Manual

 
The chip encoding features of the driver are application independent, i.e. the application does not 
need to be set-up for the specific encoder hardware of the encoding plugins. 
 
The entire encoder-specific configuration is done in the Plugin Manager, stored and handled 
outside the printing application, as well as the encoding process itself. 
 
However, there are application requirements that need to be fulfilled in order to process the 
encoding data in the driver. 
 
All of the encoding data is transported in a so called "encoding string" to the driver and later to the 
plugin. The card layout must contain this string somewhere on the front page. This is especially 
important to remember when using two-sided layouts. 
 
 
If the driver recognizes the encoding string on the layout, it will not print it on the card but use it for 
encoding. Therefore, the encoding string must be sent "as text" by the application. 
 
The "switch" for the driver to find the encoding string is in the Card Type section of the document's 
printer properties. If "Smartchip" is selected here, the encoding string will be captured and 
processed. 
 

 

 
Unfortunately, it cannot be determined in advance whether an application sends the string in the 
correct format or not. The simplest way to check this is to print a layout containing a valid encoding 
string. If the string is printed, the application does not support the way how the driver intercepts the 
encoding string. 
 
However, this has been tested thoroughly with many different applications and there are two rules-
of-thumb that you have to know: 
 
Pixel graphic drawing applications usually render text "as pixels" and are therefore not capable of 
sending the encoding string "as text" to the driver. 
 
Special transformations for shading, blending, winding, squeezing, skewing, twisting, outlining and 
anything else do process the text "as graphic" and are therefore not suggested for the encoding 
string.