XPP - Recent Threads

RE: Does XPP support video import, placement and output?

Bart Terryn — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 14:21:09 GMT

Thanks Jonathan for the follow up.
As PDFlib does support embedding of video maybe I should file an official 'ídea'....

Does XPP support video import, placement and output?

Bart Terryn — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 11:02:34 GMT

Wondering if XPP supports the import, placement and output of video in one way or the other (native or embedded in a pdf)

RE: Does XPP support video import, placement and output?

Jonathan Dagresta — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 11:28:47 GMT

I think the current options only include having a WWW link to the video file (which would work in both PDF and PS workflows) and as you found having a PDF image with an embedded video (which will only work in the PDF workflow).

As to what PDFlib supports (PDF workflow), starting with the XPP 9.7.0.0 release XPP uses PDFlib version 10 and I found the information below in the PDFlib 10.0.0 API Reference manual.

But unless the Postscript language was enhanced (if not already done) and XPP was able to support that new "level" of PS, I don't think XPP will ever be able to support embedded videos in the PS workflow.

RE: Does XPP support video import, placement and output?

Bart Terryn — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 14:27:38 GMT

In the mean time I can answer this myself ☺

The way to succes for me was to put the mp4 movie on a blank pdf of the correct page dimensions using acrobat pro and save it as a pdf.
I then imported this pdf in xpp and put it on a page using the ig macro.
And then print the resulting division using the direct pdf way..
This leaves the imported pdf as is and the result is an XPP generated pdf with a movie embedded
Printing through the PS way (distiller or ghostscript) would not work as this would force XPP to convert the imported pdf to eps which would kill the video.

Just that you know...

Remark:
I looked into the pdfLib doc and could not find any reference to any video or movie format.
Apparently pdfLib does not support adding a movie file directly into a PDF.
A bit to my suprise.🙁

RE: XPP Ideas Page

Sharon Appleton — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 13:44:29 GMT

Bart, our team is working on this. As soon as there is an update, I will post it here.

XPP Ideas Page

Bart Terryn — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 15:28:17 GMT

The link to the XPP Ideas page on this site has gone missing.
Is that by mistake or by design?

RE: XPP Ideas Page

Jonathan Dagresta — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 15:57:56 GMT

There is an Ideas "tab" near the top of the page (under "XPP > XPP"), but it obviously is not linked to the correct URL as I get a "Not Found" error when I click on it.

The bad Ideas link is to https://community.rws.com/archive/contenta-ideas/i/ideas-xpp and it should be to https://community.rws.com/ideas/contenta-ideas/i/ideas-xpp

There's an extra "/archive/" in the bad link.

RE: XPP Ideas Page

Sharon Appleton — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 15:31:37 GMT

Hi Bart,

I am investigating changes made to the community. In the meantime, here is the XPP Ideas link, XPP Ideas.

Thank you for posting this here!

Sharon

RE: Is there any way to fix the linking error in subhead while creating ADA compliance PDF?

Jonathan Dagresta — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 12:12:51 GMT

Hi Shahnawaz,

In the PDF Support in XPP manual, in the Special PDF Features: Direct-to-PDF (divpdf) chapter 8, there is the following section:

PDF/UA Tagging Tips and Tricks

Overview

When debugging issues with PDF tagging, you may encounter PDFlib exceptions in cases where, for example, an assigned PDF tag is not valid in the context in which it is assigned. In such cases, it can be useful to execute divpdf with the -dump option, which creates a debugging output file named divpdf.log in the same directory where the PDF is created.

By examining the divpdf.log file, specifically looking for operations having to do with PDF tagging, you might get some hints as to what the problem with tagging is.

Is there any way to fix the linking error in subhead while creating ADA compliance PDF?

Shahnawaz Haider — Mon, 16 Feb 2026 13:14:18 GMT

Hi Everybody,

I am getting error while creating ADA compliance PDF and this is due to link coming in the subhead component, whereas it is working fine for text components. For example:

<bridgehead><para><para>This is test head having a <?xpp :pdfs;12;www.google.com?>link<?xpp :pdfe;12></para></para></bridgehead>

Can anybody help me to fix it.

Thanks!

Shahnawaz

RE: Is there any way to fix the linking error in subhead while creating ADA compliance PDF?

Sharon Appleton — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 16:57:56 GMT

Hi Shahnawaz,

Please open a support case with us for assistance. The message indicates a tag structure problem, we would be happy to help you figure this out. If you eliminate the :pdfs/:pdfe macros in that specific locations, do you still get the error?

Kind regards,

Sharon

RE: Is there any way to fix the linking error in subhead while creating ADA compliance PDF?

Shahnawaz Haider — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 16:17:38 GMT

Hi Sharon,

I am getting below error:

PDFlib exception occurred:

[12013] PDF_begin_item: Element type 'H2' cannot have any descendants in weakly structured PDF/UA

I am using divpdf -pdfua -pdfmark to generate the ADA compliance PDF.

If I remove the switch -pdfmark from divpdf command then my PDF generates successfully so wanted to know how we can handle the link in the subheads.

Thanks!

Shahnawaz

RE: Is there any way to fix the linking error in subhead while creating ADA compliance PDF?

Sharon Appleton — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 14:08:04 GMT

Hi Shahnawaz,

What is the error you are getting?

Kind regards,

Sharon Appleton

RE: Compose error "invalid C_2DB code"

Jonathan Dagresta — Fri, 02 Jan 2026 15:54:09 GMT

Hi Chung,

I'm sorry to hear that you have run into this problem.

The C_2DB error is an internal composition error that indicates that the composition engine ran into something unexpected in the data stream being composed and it was unable to recover or continue.

It's possible that it is being caused by something that is not correct in your import file, but it could be something else.

I do not think that it is likely that you will be able to get the help you need to resolve this in this Community forum.

I suggest that you open a Case with RWS Support as the full file being imported will probably need to be examined.

I hope that you are able to find a resolution with help from Support.

Compose error "invalid C_2DB code"

Chung Lew — Fri, 02 Jan 2026 01:43:32 GMT

Hello,

There is an error showing after composing a division after importing a text with mark trace code.

May I know what is the meaning of this error? I cannot find any about it from the menu.

We are working on XPP9.3.1.

Regards,

Chung

Need Hex code for the entity ℠ (Service Mark)

Shahnawaz Haider — Wed, 24 Dec 2025 09:36:01 GMT

Hi Everybody,

I need the hex code for the entity ℠ (Service Mark) like we have hex code for @0096, @0097 and @0098 for Copyright, Registered Mark and Trade Mark symbols.

Thanks!

Shahnawaz

RE: Need Hex code for the entity ℠ (Service Mark)

Shawn Linderman — Fri, 02 Jan 2026 15:41:10 GMT

If you can't transform it into UTF-16BE, I guess only other option would be to transform it into string "(SM)".

RE: Need Hex code for the entity ℠ (Service Mark)

Shahnawaz Haider — Fri, 02 Jan 2026 15:39:25 GMT

Thank you Shawn and Jonathan for your inputs. I will try it and will let you know my results.

RE: Need Hex code for the entity ℠ (Service Mark)

Jonathan Dagresta — Fri, 02 Jan 2026 15:32:41 GMT

Yes, that is what I was finding as well that the service mark (SM) character cannot be represented in the PDFDocEncoding character set.

I suggest that you look in the PDF Support in XPP manual in Chapter 3 on PDF XyMacros and specifically at the discussion of the DOCINFO macro type where it talks about using an ASCIIHex format to specify a pdfmark (keyword) value directly with Unicode values rather than with the PDFDocEncoding character set.

The documentation gives an example for specifying a Title "Zebras" as the following (the beginning FEFF is a required Unicode byte order mark when using this ASCIIHex format):
/Title <FEFF005A00650062007200610073>

You will need to specify the entire value with Unicode values (rather than using any PDFDocEncoding values).

And if you are doing an Import (aka ToXSF), then I believe you will also need to use "@003c" and "@003e" for the '<' and '>' characters in the input file that is being imported because this coding is inside of a XyMacro. In other words, if you were doing the above example in an import file then in that file it would look like this:
/Title @003cFEFF005A00650062007200610073@003e

I hope that this part of the XPP documentation is able to help you achieve your goal.

RE: Need Hex code for the entity ℠ (Service Mark)

Shawn Linderman — Fri, 02 Jan 2026 14:46:27 GMT

Aha! Very conflicting info about pdfdocencoding and (SM) char.

query: U+2120 pdfdocencode values

The Unicode character U+2120 (SERVICE MARK) does not have a direct, standard mapping in the legacy PDFDocEncoding character set.

Because U+2120 is not included in the 8-bit PDFDocEncoding table (defined in the PDF specification, ISO 32000), it cannot be represented directly using this encoding.

Alternatives for PDF Generation:

Use UTF-16BE: For modern PDF applications, characters like U+2120 should be encoded using \x21\x20 in a UTF-16BE format, often signified by the Byte Order Mark FEFF at the start of the string.
Replacement: In legacy systems relying strictly on PDFDocEncoding, the character might be replaced with (SM) or a generic space.

The service mark was added to Unicode in 1993. The legacy PDFDocEncoding character set pre-dates the existence of service mark character.

RE: Need Hex code for the entity ℠ (Service Mark)

Shawn Linderman — Fri, 02 Jan 2026 14:07:39 GMT

More googling, I found that Adobe uses PDFDocEncoding hex codes for special characters in metadata. From there, googled "PDFDocEncoding for service mark" and it returned x85 or xA0 (I got conflicting responses based on queries--2nd search stringI used was "pdfdocencoding hex value for U+2120") as the hex code:

Hex codes for special characters in PDF metadata fields (such as Keywords) are usually represented using PDFDocEncoding (a 1-byte encoding based on ISO 8859-1) or UTF-16BE (for Unicode) when edited via low-level tools or scripting.

However, for direct input in Adobe Acrobat's Document Properties dialog, pasting the character directly is recommended, as Acrobat handles the conversion.

If you are programmatically generating PDF metadata (e.g., via pdfmark or backend scripting), here are common hexadecimal representations for symbols in that context:

Common Symbol Hex Codes (PDFDocEncoding)

® (Registered): <AE>
™ (Trademark): <99>
• (Bullet): <B7>
– (En Dash): <96>
— (Em Dash): <97>
° (Degree): <B0>
Ω (Omega): <5D> (Commonly used in specific Symbol font mappings, otherwise use Unicode)

The PDFDocEncoding for the service mark character (℠) is typically \x85 in octal (\205) or single-byte hexadecimal representation.

Technical Details for Service Mark Character:

PDFDocEncoding Hex: 0x85
PDFDocEncoding Octal: \205
Unicode Equivalent: U+2120

The PDFDocEncoding hexadecimal value for the Service Mark symbol (℠, U+2120) is 0xA0.

Contextual Details:

Symbol: ℠ (Service Mark)
Unicode: U+2120
PDFDocEncoding Hex: 0xA0 (160 in decimal)
Notes: PDFDocEncoding is used for text strings in PDF document metadata, such as bookmarks and document information fields.

RE: Need Hex code for the entity ℠ (Service Mark)

Shawn Linderman — Fri, 02 Jan 2026 13:47:36 GMT

I believe he has to be inputting these entity codes in the JOB's PDF spec in the Keywords field. But in the resulting PDF output, examined with Acrobat's Document Properties -> Keywords on Description tab, they didn't get them--unless they transform the PDF to change the entity codes to the Adobe-only @xxxx hex codes in that metadata field. Evidently Adobe has its own character mappings in metadata fields that apply to symbol chars and nobody knows the hex code that will display the SM symbol. Am I describing your processes correctly, Shahnawaz?

RE: Need Hex code for the entity ℠ (Service Mark)

Shahnawaz Haider — Fri, 02 Jan 2026 07:47:12 GMT

Hi Jonathan,

I have used @0096 and @0098 hex code value for the Copyright and Trademark symbols through the transformation table where I have replaced the unicode entity © and ™ with it.

Please let me know incase you need additional information.

Warm Regards,

Shahnawaz

RE: Need Hex code for the entity ℠ (Service Mark)

Jonathan Dagresta — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 17:38:25 GMT

Hi Shahnawaz,

Can you please describe where in the XPP data you are successfully using the @0096 and @0098 syntax for the Copyright and Trademark symbols.

Is it done with coding directly within an XPP division, or perhaps via coding in the Item Format spec or the CSS spec for a division?

And if so, can you please give a complete example of such coding.

Thank you for any further information that you are able to provide.

RE: Need Hex code for the entity ℠ (Service Mark)

Shahnawaz Haider — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 15:35:26 GMT

Hi Shawn,

We are in 100% automation system where we used to generate the PDF using divpdf tool in the backend, so we cannot directly copy and paste in the metadata field as you mentioned.

Thanks!

Shahnawaz