8.8

The idea is that a PDFfile, because it is a formatted document in and of itself, doesn't
absolutely need to go through PlanetPress Design to be processed and printed. Additionally,
because of the PDFtools in PlanetPress Workflow, you can easily merge, split, print and take
parts of the PDFfile as required.
Because we are using Metadata, however, here are a few ground rules to keep in mind while
working with such workflows (these rules also apply to Metadata use in general):
l Modifying Metadata does not immediately modify the data. This is one of the benefits
of Metadata because you can sort it, filter it, sequence it, add data to it, without ever
modifying the data file itself. This is important because if you, for instance, filter out certain
data pages from the metadata and then save your data file with the Send to Folder task,
the full data file is saved, not the filtered one. This is resolved through different methods,
used in the different examples below.
l Modifying data does not immediately modify the Metadata. So, if you have a PDFfile
with metadata and you use a PDFsplitter, the metadata information would still reflect the
original data, not the split. This can generally be resolved by using the Create Metadata
plugin again.
l Branches, Loops and Conditions do not reset the metadata. This is important in
some cases because the metadata does affect your output (see next point)and can cause
confusion if not handled properly. For example, if you were to split a data file and, under a
specific condition, create metadata on the file and generate a PDF, other wise print the
file, you would run into this issue. When the metadata is created in the condition, it stays
"active"even on the next split. If that split actually prints, it's using the metadata from the
previous split, and will attempt to print the number of pages specified in the metadata. So,
it may print 3 pages instead of 40, or 25 pages, the last 5 of which would be blank. The
only way to get around this is to either regenerate your metadata when possible, or to use
the "Metadata File Management" on page519 to delete the active metadata file. When
doing this, metadata is ignored so the data file itself properly determines the number of
pages to print.
l As a general rule, only input tasks and Metadata related tasks modify Metadata. There
are, however, a few notable exceptions:
l "Create PDF" on page293 has the option to reset your metadata according to the
new PDFfile. In reality, Create PDF is one of the most useful tasks in PDF
workflows, since it is the easiest way to make your PDFfile conform to the metadata
without using a PlanetPress Design document. See the "Create PDF" on page293
page for more information.
Page 187