Layout-8000 15.6.3 (November 15, 2016)

Layout-8000 v15.6.3
11/15/2016

Highlights

• ADD Light is a new on-screen report that shows how ads are distributed according to their requests for groups, sections or pages. This information may help you select a better template for a product.
• Improved automatic placement of ads that request spot color and/or an ear position.
• Mirroring of data and files generates up to 95% less network traffic.
• Improved interfaces to SCS/AdMAX, CCI AdDesk, SCS/ClassPag, MerlinOne E-Sheets and Presteligence systems.
• Fixed several bugs.

Products page

• Fixed a bug that prevented people from creating a "New Product" when the Paper name was more than 20 characters long.

Get Ads

• "Get Ads" now always updates the database's Ads table with ads in the import file. Previously, "Get Ads" updated the Ads file only if the "Get Ads" style was configured to run the "Update transaction file into db" command.
• At sites with AdMAX, "cardex.txt" files from AdMAX are always applied to the database's Ads table.
• Error messages about N transaction codes have been eliminated.
• The "Database Ranges" maintenance program populates a database table named "ggroups" which is used by the CCI AdDesk Sales interface.
• At sites that provide a trickle feed of XML files, if "intolayout.sh" fails to run a program, the emailed alert now includes the Layout-8000 server's name. That makes it clear which server has a problem. That saves IT and SCS staff considerable time.

ADD Light Report

• ADD Light is an on-screen report that shows how ads are distributed according to their requests for groups, sections or pages. This information may help users select a better template for a product.
• To see this report, right-click on any product in LWS product list and choose "View Ad Distribution" from the pop-up menu.
• There are two versions of the report, one for a created product and one for an uncreated product.
• The report for an uncreated product shows the total area requested by ads in each scope.
• The report for a created product can show not only the total area requested by ads in each scope, but also the newshole for each scope, area of blocks assigned to each scope, total area of each scope, and what percent the ad area is of the total area.
• Both reports include a dialog that allows the user to switch between three units of area displayed in the list.  The areas can be in pages, columns, or column-inches.
• For multi-zone products, the dialog allows the user to switch between zones.

Design & Dummy area

• The "Request vs Actual Value" window's Type column shows "Ear" instead of "Ear ad" to reduce confusion about editorial blocks.
• The Dummy command honors Ear requests from blocks.
• The Dummy command may place spot color ads on full color pages. Global Layout Settings have a new setting that controls which spot color ads may be placed on full color pages. The setting is governed by the newspaper's business rules.
• If the inner scope is PAPER and someone clicks on the toolbar's "Unplace inner scope items" button, Layout-8000 saves the product in case that was a mistake. The save point is named "Undo Unplace".
• The Editorial menu has a new choice named Block Bucket. This may help users more efficiently create blocks from block templates and place those blocks on pages in the newspaper.
• Pages may exclude classified line ads. This feature is available to sites that have Layout-8000 and ClassPag. To use it, (1) right-click on a page. (2) In the menu that pops up, choose "Exclude line ads". In "outext.txt" file page records, a page that excludes classified line ads have a new flag on line 2 in column position 75.

Ad Distribution (ADD) report

• Corrected ad area. Some ads had an incorrect area of 0 column-inches. Area totals were off because of that. Both problems are solved in this version of Layout-8000.

Send to Pagination

• Pagination styles have a new "Destination System" named "CLASSPAG".
• Improved population of <accountnumber> tags in the XML interface to Presteligence for e-tearsheets.
• When "Send to Pagination" is configured to "Copy" page dummies to a local folder, an "Could not create file" error message popped up.
• When "Send to Pagination" is configured to "Copy" page dummies to a file name that included a version, the version number did not increase.
• If "Send to Pagination" is configured to use the PAPNAME or EDNAME variables for a file name, any spaces in the paper or edition name will be automatically replaced with underscores in the file name. This prevents problems that crop up when sending files with spaces in their names to remote servers.

Database Ranges

• If an administrator enters a group name for a new site or publication that conflicts with one of the groups that are available to ALL sites, a warning pops up on their screen.
• When creating a new Color, the Name field's drop-down list now contains only color names.
• The "Database Ranges" maintenance program populates a database table named "ggroups" which is used by the CCI AdDesk Sales interface.

Screen Setup

• The terminal that you run Layout-8000 from will show a report of the minimum screen dimensions in pixels needed to run Layout-8000 in wide and non-wide mode.
• If you run the "window query geometry program" and create a window that is too small for Layout-8000, the program will tell you that Layout-8000 cannot be run in a window that small.

Test Servers

• When the "sync-layout.sh" script synchronizes products, it uses rsync instead of scp. The benefit is that products can be re-synchronized faster.

High Availability - Mirroring

• Mirroring generates less network traffic.
• Companies with a primary server in one state and a hot standby server in in a different state may experience a reduction in WAN or Internet bandwidth between that Mirrored pair of servers. One newspaper group achieved a 95% reduction in daily network traffic. Here's how.
• Daytime Mirroring excludes newspapers from past years (e.g. 2015), as those products were synchronized last night and probably will not change today.
• The "mirror.conf" file has a new option named SPUPDATE_FREQUENCY which controls how often Layout-8000 data is replicated throughout the day. By default, data is frequently synchronized which is a perfect choice for servers that live in the same data center. When SPUPDATE_FREQUENCY=C, Layout-8000 data is synchronized at the same time as files. The latter setting is a better choice for a Mirrored pair of servers that live in different states with a restrictive WAN or Internet connection.

High Availability - Backups

• The "backup-essentials.sh" script now also backs up (1) ads that run in future publications and (2) configuration files in the "/u/layout/bin" directory. That makes the "essential" backup more useful. If disaster strikes, the "essential" backup contains enough data for a company to make Layout-8000 operational again. The pain of recreating years of setup goes away.

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