About Control files

The control file that is used to provide the data for assembling into a composite document may be a simple text list or a CSV file

Text control files (.LOF)

A text control file is basically a list of files. Each line of the file starts with the name (and path if the documents are not all in the same folder) of one of the component documents. The filename may be a wildcarded file specification; filenames must be enclosed in single quotes if they contain spaces. By default, EscapeE will create a field definition file with the same filestem automatically if none already exists. For complex composite documents, however, you may find it convenient to set up separate field definition files for some of the component files. You may do this by appending the command-line option /FIELDS to specify the name of a fields definition file. In fact you may append any of EscapeE's command-line options to any component document's filename; e.g.

/DEFINE fieldname=value

to define a field.

CSV control files (.CSV)

If the control file has extension .CSV or begins with a double-quote character it is assumed to be a set of field definitions in comma-separated form.
The first record must contain the field names for the data found in subsequent records.
Each subsequent record must contain the information required for EscapeE to construct the filename of one component document. By default it will use the first CSV datafield as the source of the filenames, but by using a fields definition file it is possible to use the special composite field definition named FILENAME to construct it from other field values. The fixed values for fields defined in the CSV file may be used in other fields and with plugins, for example, to add text or barcodes.