8.5

PlanetPress Design. So in reality, the number of available patterns for document generation is 19990, but for
simplicity's sake this FAQuses the round number "20,000".
In a typical PlanetPress Capture implementation, a process in PlanetPress Workflow generates output
(generally, this output is directly printed) and, at the same time, will "lock" one pattern for each page that it
generates, if that page contains a pattern. PlanetPress Workflow also stores a copy of each document in the
Capture Database, in PDF format.
While a document is printed, and while this printed document has not received any ink or signature, the
document is deemed "open", the pattern it uses remains locked in the database and cannot be re-used.
Then, when someone writes on the document and sends the pen data to PlanetPress Workflow (through a
docking station or through Bluetooth), if the required conditions have been met, the document will be
"closed", its pattern released and available to be used immediately.
An open document can also be called a "live" document, in the sense that it is only active between the time
where it is printed and the time where ink from the Anoto Digital Pen is processed and the document is
closed. This duration is called "time to live" or "TTL", and it is the second very important number: how long is
the pattern actually needed.
The third important number is based on your actual output needs. In other words, how many documents do
you intend to print on a regular basis that will contain a pattern?
These three numbers, together, represent an easy way to determine if the 20,000 patterns are actually
enough for you. Basically, if you generate X documents within a specific time frame but N of these
documents are closed through regular process (writing on them with a pen and docking it) during that period,
does the difference between both ever reach 20,000?
Example
Say you print 19,000 pages containing a pattern, every day. You may think you'll "run out of patterns" after a
single day. But if 18,900 of these documents are being written to and processed within the day, at the end of
the day you only have a 100 page difference, possibly due to mistakes, lost pages, or errors during
processing. In this specific example, you would run out of patterns only after 10 days, assuming the numbers
remained completely static. Since there are easy ways to deal with these remainders (a simple automated
process that, once a day, closes any document that is older than 48 hours, for example), a correct
implementation like this one would be perfectly functional and not be affected by the 20,000 page limit.
Remember however that this means that 19,000 physical sheets of paper are printed every day, and those
19,000 documents are written on using one or more Anoto Digital Pens, which are then processed back into
the system.