ILabPascal - Meta Tags

ILabPascal supports the definition of meta tags which contain additional information about the particular script. Syntactically the meta tags have to be included as a comment within the first 25 lines of a script (the number of lines which are analysed for meta tags can be adjusted in the preferences dialog). Each tag starts with a hash-tag (#) immediately followed by the tag identifier. Only one tag per line is allowed.

Meta Tag Parameters Explanation & Details
#AccessRights text This tag controls the access rights for enycrypted scripts, for unencrypted scripts this tag is ignored. The access to scripts can be restricted to specific users and/or certain license groups by specifying the corresponding license groups and/or individual users (written in square brackets and separated by semicolons). Each specified user/group can have either full access or execute-only access. Execute-only access is indicated by a ':X' substring appended to the user or group name.

See the section on access rights for a detailed explanation how to control access to your scripts.

#Author name Name of the author of the script
#Caption text A short description of the script. This text is displayed in the selection list of the Epina ImageLab GUI.
#Certificate text A certificate which authorizes the script to be run for administration purposes. This certificate can be issued by Epina GmbH for OEM customers.
#DateTime text A user defined date and time. The #DateTime tag overrides the date of the last modification in the script list.
#Encrypt PWD If this tag is defined the script is stored as an encrypted text using the password defined by the parameter PWD. Please note that the password must not contain blanks or non-printable characters (in fact, the password is considered to be the string until the first blank or line feed). When trying to open an encrypted script, you'll be asked to enter the password before the script is loaded and displayed.

Warning: If you leave the password PWD empty Epina ImageLab uses a system-generated password which will lock you out unless you specified your license id in the access rights before encryping the script (use the command "Insert Meta Tags" to automatically generate meta tags which contain your license id in the #AccessRights tag).

See the section on access rights for a detailed explanation how to control access to your scripts.

#InstallBtn order icon hint If the tag #InstallBtn is defined, Epina ImageLab installs a shortcut button for the script. The parameter order is a positive numeric value which determines the position of the button if more than one script button is defined (buttons with lower order numbers will be displayed first). The parameter icon specifies an icon file. The icon file must be a 42x21 pixel graphic (for details see below) stored as a BMP file in the script directory. The filename must not contain blanks. The hint parameter defines the hint which is displayed when the mouse is over the button. Epina ImageLab supports a maximum of 9 shortcut buttons.
#MinILabVersion ILabVers Minimum required Epina ImageLab version. If the copy of Epina ImageLab has a release number which is less than the minimum required version the script cannot be executed. This way you can ensure that certain features of Epina ImageLab are supported. The parameter ILabVers is a floating point number with two decimal places.
#ReadOnly TRUE/FALSE If set to TRUE the script cannot be edited without resetting the read-only state. In order to reset the read-only state, open the script, right click the corresponding tab of the script editor and deselect "Read Only" in the context menu. Please note that read-only scripts are displayed using a gray background. Please note that the ReadOnly tag is just a means to prevent users from unintentionally altering the script, it does not restrict access to the code.
#ScriptType text This tag is a special tag for user defined modules of older Epina ImageLab versions. Don't use this tag at all.
#Version text Version identifier of the script. The identifier text can be any string reflecting the version (we recommend to use a major/minor revision approach, but it is left to the user how to identify different versions of a script).

Here is an excerpt of a script showing the definition of meta tags. The script is assigned to a button using the icon "scrbtn_1.bmp" and is encrypted. Access rights are execute-only for all users worldwide except for the user having the license id "FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF" who has full access to the script:

program SampleScript1;

(*************************************************************************
  #AUTHOR Jone Doe
  #DATETIME 2020-07-26 09:49:22
  #VERSION 1.0
  #CAPTION opens a data file and performs a few transformations
  #INSTALLBTN 1 scrbtn_1.bmp just a sample script
  #MINILABVERSION  3.26
  #READONLY FALSE
  #ENCRYPT
  #ACCESSRIGHTS group [world:x] user [FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF]
 *************************************************************************)

....
....

Shortcut Buttons

The shortcut buttons use icons which can be configured by the user. A button icon has to have a resolution of 42 by 21 pixels. The left part (first 21 pixels on the x-axis) contains the icon used when the button is enabled, the right part is used to display the disabled state:

Epina ImageLab provides default icons for the first 9 shortcut buttons (named scrbtn_1.bmp to scrbtn_9.bmp). You can create your own shortcut icons either by editing the existing ones or by creating new ones.

Hint: Please note that these meta tags used in ILabPascal scripts have nothing in common with the TMetaData class which can be used to access the meta data of a data file.