Connect priint:pdf renderer to the Publishing Server

Overview

You can use the priint:comet pdf renderer for rendering pages, exporting PDF documents, create previews and several more rendering tasks.
Connecting publishing server with priint:comet pdf renderer requires some additional setup steps, which are described in this document.

Installation hints for priint:pdf renderer

Requirements

These are the minimal versions required to use priint:pdf renderer with the publishing server:

PublishingServer Version 4.1 >= Build 205
priint:pdf renderer Version 4.1 >= R10502

Basic Installation

Please follow the installation instruction delivered with your priint:pdf renderer release. This contains detailed information about licensing, configuring fonts and pdf presets ("joboptions") and additional requirements.

For a quick test ater installation, you can just open a terminal or a command prompt, change into the installation directory and type

comet_pdf -s hello

If the basic installation works, this will generate a PDF welcome page and open the system default PDF viewer.

System privileges

Please make sure, that the Java Application Server user (service account or local system account) can access the priint:pdf renderer installation directory. Minimal requirement is read the directory content and run the comet_pdf.exe resp. comet_pdf programm.

Depending on the path configuration (see below), you may also have to grant write privileges on this directory (or subdirectories) to this user.

Connecting publishing server to priint:pdf renderer instances

To use the priint:pdf renderer with the publishing server, it first must be configured in the comet_admin database resp. priint:suite administration console.

During installation, you can choose whether to support priint:pdf renderer or not, and choose the number of instances, installation path etc. You can change this configuration later, however some of these settings can only be edited directly in the database and will require a server restart.

Basic configuration

The priint:pdf renderer instances need to connect back to the publishing server (actually to the Comet3 WebService provided by the CometBridge PubServer Plugin), this is a SOAP over HTTP connection.

The callback address and credentials can be configured in priint:suite > Administration > Preferences > AdminDB property.

Furthermore, you can configure some basic settings for all priint.pdf renderers connected to the publishing server.

Settings in this panel:

Bridge Address: this is the IP or name plus port of the publishing server. This IP or name must be resolveable from the priint:pdf renderer host. The port must accept requests from the priint:pdf renderer host, but should deny requests from other hosts.
Bridge User: global user name for callback connections. The user must have sufficient privileges to connect to any required Comet project, but should not have any UI privileges.
Bridge Password: global password for callback connections
Working Directory: relative or absolute path for log files and cache folders used by priint:pdf renderer, see comments on paths below. This setting applies for local instances only.
Log Renderer Calls: log commands sent to the priint:pdf renderer and stdout / stderr in the server applicaiton log.
Write Renderer Logs: let the priint:pdf renderer write log files (comet.log and api.log). Location of the log files is defined by the Working Directory setting. This setting applies for local instances only.
Synchronize Using PID Files: use this option only, if you encounter synchronization problems (such as priint:pdf renderer has finished a task, but the result files are not accessible for publishing server yet). This setting applies for local instances only.
Renderer File Type: the type of documents supported on this server. This is a system wide setting and can be either InDesign® Document (.indd) or Comet Interchange Format (.w2ml). For the priint:pdf renderer, this value must be set to Comet Interchange Format (.w2ml).
Check Renderer File Type: check the renderer file type before processing documents with a certain renderer. Usually this should be set to false.

Note: the latter two settings will most probably be obsolete in the final 4.1 Release. Handling of heterogenous document types is currently being developed, in later versions this will not require any extra configuration.

Note II: by setting Check Renderer File Type to true and configuring both priint:pdf renderer and InDesignServer instances, you can process different document types on the same server at the same time. The alpha and beta Releases of the 4.1 version only support one document type - either InDesign® or W2ML - at the same time, so using different document types is an inofficial feature, which might help you in certain situation, but is not suppoerted by Werk II.

basic configuration

priint:pdf renderer configuration

There should be at least two preconfigured server entries in the priint:suite > Administration > Preferences > AdminDB property > Indesign servers node. Actually we do not configure physical servers here, but only server types (LOCAL, REMOTE). For PDF Renderer, we need a third entry with type PDFRENDERER.

You can check, which server types are configured in the indesignserver table in the comet_admin database (e.g. using MySQL Workbench, Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio or similar tools).

SELECT * FROM comet_admin.indesignserver;

should output something like

+----------+----------------+----------------+
| SERVERID | SERVERNAME     | SERVERPROTOCOL | 
+----------+----------------+----------------+
| 2        | Remote Server  | REMOTE         |
| 3        | Offline Server | COMETOFFLINE   |
| 4        | PDF Renderer   | PDFRENDERER    |
+----------+----------------+----------------+

If the PDFRENDERER entry is missing, add it, e.g. using this SQL statement:

INSERT INTO comet_admin.indesignserver (SERVERID, SERVERNAME, SERVERPROTOCOL) 
    VALUES (4, 'PDF Renderer', 'PDFRENDERER');

You must restart glassfish / publishing servers to see the changes.

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