DESIGN TOOL

The UnForm Designer is a browser-based product that is served by the UnForm web server.  It provides a flexible environment for editing UnForm rule files and producing previews of jobs. The designer fully understands the structure of an UnForm rule file, and the many UnForm commands, and provides syntax highlighting, inline help for commands and functions, and a preview pane that can display either PDF documents or HTML5 documents.

When you use the designer, you are maintaining rule files on the UnForm server, and you are using the server to produce the previews of the jobs. For that reason, there is full compatibility between the designer and the UnForm server. What you see in the design environment is what you will see when live jobs are run, except for device differences.  Test printing is supported as well, so you can verify printed output works correctly as well.

For those users who are already familiar with editing rule files manually, there are a few simple concepts to be aware of when using the designer.

•When the designer opens a rule file, it is opening a file on the server, not a local file on the client (unless, of course, the server is running locally).
 

•When the designer saves a file, it is saved on the server as a .rud file, rather than a .rul file, in order to avoid incomplete or untested changes to live rule files.
 

•When you are ready to make a rule file live, you publish it, at which time the designer saves it as a .rul file on the server. The designer's File menu has both Save and Publish options

The UnForm Design Tool is a browser-based product, accessible via the UnForm web server. You can access it via the web server's portal page, or directly with a URL.  The URL structure is simple.  If the web server is on IP address 192.168.1.10 and listening on the standard 27402 port, you would use this link:

 http://192.168.1.10:27402/arc?dsn=1

The design tool is presented in a single main window, used for editing and testing rule files.  There are numerous sample rule files available for review that demonstrate various features and techniques.