What to paste
- PECTAB required
- The format table itself. It begins
PT for a boarding pass or
BTT for a bag tag, and the device is recognised from that — there is nothing to choose.
- Template optional, boarding pass only
- The
TT table holding the static artwork: lines, boxes, logos and fixed
text. Supplying it draws that artwork in alongside the variable data.
- Data optional
- A live boarding pass or bag tag message. It replaces generic element names with the
real values, so you see what the passenger would be handed, and it points out any
element the message carries that the PECTAB does not define.
The Load example buttons fill all three with a known-good set.
The mock-up
- Black is printed content; red is the template overlay.
- The grid is a ruler, not part of the stock. The solid blue lines carry the row
letters and column numbers; the dotted green ones fill in between.
- Barcodes are encoded for real, not drawn from pictures. One that cannot be encoded —
letters in a numbers-only symbology, say — is outlined with a dashed box and the
reason appears in its explanation and on hover.
- A logo is drawn as a frame at a nominal size. The PECTAB carries only the logo's
number, so its printed extent cannot be known here; the bottom-left corner it is
labelled in is the print anchor, and that is exact.
The editor
Every element is listed with an explanation of what it prints and where, beside a
to-scale mock-up of the stock.
- Click an element — its explanation or its text — and the mock-up marks exactly where
it prints. Click it on the mock-up and the list scrolls to it.
- Edit an element's text and the mock-up redraws as you type.
- Drag an element on the mock-up and its coordinates are rewritten for you. Boarding
pass elements snap back inside the stock; bag tag elements may sit outside the
printable area, because real ones do.
The buttons
- Duplicate element
- Copies the element you have selected. On a bag tag or a template that is a new element
sharing the original's content; on a boarding pass it is a second place the same element
prints, because one ATB element can print at as many positions as it likes. Remove an
element with the × beside its text.
- Sort
- Puts elements in the order they print, top to bottom then left to right. On a bag
tag it renumbers the PECTAB's elements; only those whose number does not decide their
content are moved, and if one that must keep its number sits where the others would be
renumbered to, it says so and changes nothing. On a boarding pass the PECTAB's order is
fixed by the specification, so Sort orders the template instead and renumbers it from
01. It is held while an edit is outstanding and released once the mock-up has caught
up.
- Revert changes
- Back to the PECTAB you arrived with.
- Print
- The mock-up first, then every element with its explanation.
- Pack up
- Returns to Home with your edits recombined into a single PECTAB string, ready to
load into printers.