Can you make an IFD from an MDF?

Alternately, “I’ve lost my form design files (IFD’s), can I get them back from the compiled forms?”

The answer to the question is no, you can’t.  And I’ll explain why.

When you compile your IFD into an MDF file for use with Central, what Design does is actually generate the appropriate printer code right then and there.  This is part of what makes it so fast – there’s no interpretation from the design to printer language (or PDF) when you produce your output.

What that means is that when Central is using your form all it needs to do is send that already-generated code to the output target.  It also means that the original design is lost in the process.

So, please, treat your IFD’s as irreplaceable – and keep them backed up.

JetForm/Accelio/Adobe Central is as fast to print as it is because it does not send a completed and rendered raster to the printer. All that the printer gets is, in the case of HP’s, PCL. It uses the smarts built into the printer itself to RIP the code to pixels for printing. As a result, the files sent down the line are much, much smaller than any spool you’ll ever see come from a Windows (for example) application.

RIP – Raster Image Processing or Raster Image Processor. This is the hardware or software responsible for taking the printing commands – things like lines, boxes and text – and turning them into pixels (a raster image) suitable for printing to paper. Every single laser and inkjet printer in the World uses a RIP of one type or another, and the best and fastest RIPs are almost always in hardware.

Raster – A bitmap image, meaning one that is made of pixels.

HP-PCL – Hewlett-Packard Printer Control Language. This is HP’s own Page Description Language intended to be used with laser printers. Though not as accurate or quite as flexible as Adobe Postscript, PCL is an excellent language which contains everything needed for business and other utility printing. One strong difference from Postscript is that PCL is a binary language as is very compact, while Postscript is actually a language and intended to be human-readable.

Smaller files means faster transit, and faster transit means faster first-page-out. The RIP in the printer is also highly-tuned to this task, so even on a relatively poor network connection we can keep printing at full speed.

The problem with these cheaper printers is that they don’t have any of these smarts built into them. They rely on the host computer doing the printing to RIP the printer data to a raster that is then sent to what is essentially just the print engine.

HP calls this “Host-based” printing. Check out the 1022n spec and see how many times it says that.

Printers like this are, generally, a bad idea anyway. They can’t be used cross-platform, and when the next OS comes out and driver support goes away…you’ve got nothing. I had a Canon laser once that worked like this, and when Windows XP came along, it suddenly became useless to me.

To get around this, you’ll have to configure your form(s) to be able to print with the HP Windows Driver. You do that from the “Presentment Targets” menu, and I don’t advise it. Primarily because then everything slows down, and you don’t want that.

If you have a fleet of these printers, you will no doubt have to bite the bullet and switch to the Windows driver. If you only have one to test, I’m sorry to say you won’t want to be saving this money…buy higher models that have the built-in RIPs.