The CALS raster format is a standard developed by the Computer Aided Acquisition and Logistics Support (CALS) office of the United States Department of Defense to standardize graphics data interchange for electronic publishing, especially in the areas of technical graphics, CAD/CAM, and image processing applications.

CALS is also an Office Document Interchange Format (ODIF) used in the Office Document Architecture (ODA) system for the exchange of compound document data between multiple machine platforms and software applications. CALS is an attempt to integrate text, graphics, and image data into a standard document architecture. Its ultimate goal is to improve and integrate the logistics functions of the military and its contractors.

CALS has also come into wide use in the commercial computer industry, such as in CAD/CAM applications, and in the aerospace industry, which owes a large part of its business to government and military contracts. CALS compliant technical illustration systems also use the PostScript Page Description Language and Encapsulated PostScript files to exchange data between themselves and commercial systems.

ELP is able to convert and print CALS files. If your printer is not able to print TIFF files, then ELP must convert in a second step the TIFF format to Postscript.

In order to detect a CALS data stream, define the key CALS2TIFF_StartDef in one of those sections: global, printer name or user name (Rules theory, how to trigger them).

[GLOBAL]

....
; defines how to detect a CALS job (First bytes up to :)
; on need add all the other CALS field descriptors

CALS2TIFF_StartDef=srcdocid:dstdocid:txtfilid:figid:

 

Just in case your printer can´t print TIFF, then convert the output stream to Postscript:

[GLOBAL]

CALS2TIFF_StartDef=srcdocid:dstdocid:txtfilid:figid:

; And turn TIFF to Postscript on

TIFF2PS_Enable=ON

; if you have always the same result page size then, e.g. A4, see tiff converter for Arguments

TIFF2PS_Arguments=-D -T -P 0 -a -S a4

Just in case your printer can´t print TIFF, and you want sometimes to print A4 and sometimes A4 or A3 if fits:

[GLOBAL]

CALS2TIFF_StartDef=srcdocid:dstdocid:txtfilid:figid:

TIFF2PS_Enable=ON

[CALS_A4]

; Printing to this queue name, result will be always A4

TIFF2PS_Arguments=-D -T -P 0 -a -Sa4

 

[CALS_BestFit]

; Printing to this queue name, result will be maximum A3

TIFF2PS_Arguments=-P 2 -a -Sbest