When you print from an application in Windows to a Print Distributor virtual printer Print Distributor writes out a temporary file. This file is formatted dependent on the driver you use so could be PCL, PostScript or some other printer format. When Print Distributor runs the actions you defined the path to this temporary file is passed to each action.

Most of this should be invisible to you however there are some scenarios where you want to access this file directly. If you are calling an external program to convert or process the print file then you can use the field ?PF? in your parameters to access the file. This is better than using the Write File action because its avoids an unnecessary copy and Print Distributor will delete the file after all the actions have run. If you are using the Script action then you can use the variable PrintFilePath to access the file.

When you use the ?PF? field you should be aware that the path may have spaces in it, normally you would surround the path with quote marks so it gets treated as a single parameter when it is passed to an external program.

It is possible to change the PrintFilePath variable from a script but in general you shouldn't as it will result in a buildup of temporary files until Print Distributor can't create any more.