Introduction to PDF export

When documentARRAY exports your document as a website it embeds  the data from the pages into a template text.

The resulting document is displayed when you click on . The output can be automatically saved as PDF file and also as DOCX.

Export Step by Step:

1) Create or import pages

Use the page editor to create the pages. It is also possible to import the data from WordPress.

2) Create an outline.

The outline will be used to create the outline of the PDF. It is responsible for the order the pages are included.

3) Complete the style sheet

The style sheet is used to format headlines in the created document.

To edit the style sheet use the inbuilt editor and modify the text in the <edit>...</edit> section.

4) Create the target template

a) To create a a new template use the menu item "Items/Add Target/Book"

You only have to provide a name which will be used as file name. Please avoid spaces and special characters in the name.

b) To edit a template double click on an item in the project explorer under "Targets"

In the editor one or more panels can be edited. Each panel represents one export. To create a new panel use the button "Add" on one of the panes which will duplicate it. This makes it easy to create a different version by just change some of the parameters.

Parameters:

Title: This is the title of the export. It can be used in table using a variable named %TITLE%

Sub-Title: This is a sub title for the export. It can be used in table using a VARIABLES named %SUBTITLE%

Custom Variables: Here you can select XML files which contain custom variables and their values.

Variable %EX%: This is not required for PDF export.

Outlines: As mentioned before an outline is used to create the menu of a web page. It is also a way to select the pages which are exported at all. Without an outline it is not possible to create a web site.

Pages Source: Not useful for PDF export

Symbols in Cond.: This is a list of names to check against the page condition (see previous line).

Please enter at least the symbol "PRINT" here, otherwise the standard export template does not work.

If you export to PDF you can add the condition "PDF" here.  You can also specify further conditions, such as language switches here.

We use "DE" and "EN" to select different elements on the same page for export when exporting to English or German documents. (Note that text on pages can be conditional)

Stylesheet: This is the style sheet used to build the page. The section "publish" or "edit" is used as CSS to format the text.

Site URL Base: Not used

Script Template(s): Not used yet for PDF output.

Create Files: Not used.

Output Folder: Not used.

Publish Folder: Not used.

New File Ext.: Not used.

Link Ext.: Not used.

Relative URLs: Not used.

Lowercase URLs: Not used.

Output Filename: Create a document and save it as a DOCX file.

Output PDF File: Create a document and save it as a PDF file. If you do noch check the PDF export, you can still check out the exort result when you click on the button "Output".

Alt. Template: Optional. This is the name of a different template to create the website structure. This is very useful, if the export is a separate batch export insted of a master export template. So you can use a completely different template for your PDF export and the HTML export.

Usually the template is used which is shown when you click on , using this option is possible to use a different template. This makes sense if you create different exports within one target project. Using a batch, you can, for example create a PDF file and a web site with one click on "Create".

5) Troubleshooting

a) When you click on "Create" nothing happens.

When clicking on "Create" only the export will be triggered which is enabled. Please make sure at least one element has been enabled.

Please note that a PDF or DocX file is only created if the respective check box was selected. Otherwise you can still examine the output when you click on . This is a good way to check the layout while you modify the template or stylesheet.

b) When you are editing a page and you press F9 to start the quick export nothing happens

Please open the target you want to use and select it for QuickExport by clicking on the button in the lower right corner.

It will be then displayed with a red border and the caption in the tabulator will be rendered in read, too.

c) The error log shows a message that a band was disabled:

This means that a group in the template can only be used when a certain condition has been set. This makes it possible to create different output using the same template by simply changing the condition symbol.

If no condition matches, nothing will be exported. Therefor please check if you have added the required conditions. For HTML export this would be "HTML", for PDF export "PRINT":

d) The exported document does not use the styles as defined in the stylesheet.

Please check if you selected the name of the style sheet in the parameters. Please also check the stylesheet. Only if the property override="true" was used for either <publish> or <edit> the style poerties will overrule the properties defined for each paragraph. Otherwise, i.e. an indentation defined in a paragraph will override any left margin defined in the style.

PDF Export Template Syntax