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Documentation

Templates and the lab

Draw a label or a document, place your information and calculations in it, start from a Word or LibreOffice document.

A template is the layout of a document: a label, printed on the label printer, or a document, saved as a PDF. Templates are drawn in the lab.

Template gallery, filterable by document type.Template gallery, filterable by document type.

The Templates tab shows all your templates with their preview, filterable by document type (Not attached included). For each one: Edit, Duplicate, Export, Attach to a type… and Delete. Your work in progress is saved automatically.

The lab

Template editor: layers on the left, label in the center, properties of the selected element on the right.Template editor: layers on the left, label in the center, properties of the selected element on the right.
  • Layers, on the left: one layer per element, which you can reorder, hide, lock or delete.
  • Page, on the right: document type, label or PDF document, format. A label takes the size of your choice; a document is an A4 page.
  • Element: position and size to the millimeter, alignment, content.
  • Preview: the actual result, with sample values.

Available elements: text, images (PNG, JPEG, SVG, WebP or GIF), rectangles, ellipses, lines, CE and ATEX markings.

Drag with snapping (Ctrl to turn it off), double-click to edit a text, Alt+drag or Ctrl+D to duplicate, Ctrl+S to save.

Placing your information

The Insert a variable palette offers the fields of the type, then the automatic information ({date}, {copy}, {location}…), with their current value.

A text can also calculate: {if quantity > 100 then "Palette" else "Carton"}, {upper(reference)}, {copy}/{copies}. The Insert menu writes them for you:

  • a Condition;
  • a text By language of the document;
  • a Formatted date, with a preview in the five languages;
  • a Formatted number (fixed decimals or leading zeros);
  • application Data.

The lab shows the result of each calculation on the sample values and flags any problem before saving. See Formulas and expressions.

Several templates per type

A type can produce several documents for each copy: those checked Produced on every generation all come out, with the same information and the same number. A parcel label and its delivery note, for example.

Sharing a template

A template is exported and imported as a .ceet file, to move it from one computer to another. Opening a .ceet file launches ceelab to import it.

Starting from a Word or LibreOffice document

A Word (.docx) or LibreOffice (.odt) document becomes a template, to be fine-tuned afterwards in the lab. For a Word document, the header and footer are brought in too.

Texts in square brackets become blanks to fill in: [date] gives the document date, and every other bracket becomes a piece of information to enter, with the bracketed text as its label. To attach the template to a type, Create and attach adds these fields to the type and attaches the template in one step.