PDF problems

[Frank Gribble]

I just tried printing a PDF for the first time. It basically worked, except it was filled with a bunch of boilerplate junk, so I (believe that I) followed the instructions in that boilerplate junk, and made a modified version of the print manual template.

My modifications were just changing the cover page around a little, and disabling several pages like "Title 1", "Title 2", "Foreword", and so forth.

I ran it again using that modified template, and two problems occurred:

First, hyperlinks no longer exist in the document; the text of the hyperlink is always there, but as plain text; the actual "link" part of the hyperlink is missing. They had been present in the version created with the boilerplate junk.

Second, the table of contents says that the Foreword is on "Page 0". Note that the Foreword is one of the things that I disabled; it shouldn't be present in the TOC at all.

Any help on either of these issues would be appreciated. Thank you.

[Frank Gribble]

OK, turning on the option "Underline Topic Links and paint in color" solved the first problem. I don't remember ever having turned that off - in fact I didn't know it existed until just now - but whatever.

The second problem (TOC lists the nonexistent Foreword on "page 0") still remains.

[Dean Whitlock]

Hi Frank,

It has been a while since I edited my own templates, but I seem to remember that, when you turn off the Forward section, you also have to go to the table of contents section and remove the band for the forward entry. Simply delete the Forward object and the page number object that goes with it.

Some other tricky things to note:

The styles of the topic headings for the PDF output must be set in the Topic section of the print manual designer, not in H&M's styles function print output tab. Only the styles of the content are affected by the H&M styles function. The height of each heading level's "band" in the Topic section determines the spacing above and below that heading.

Where each section starts (next page, odd page, even page) is set in the print manual designer. Go to a section and double-click on a blank area of the page. In that dialog, the top half refers to the section as a whole, while the table at the bottom affects different topic levels within the section (which applies to the Topic section only, actually).

Page breaks are controlled both in H&M, with the keep-with-next paragraph setting, and in the print manual designer, by adjusting the height of the topic content band in the Topic section. The height of the topic content band determines how much space must be available at the bottom of the page in order to start the topic there. If there isn't that much space, the topic starts at the top of the next page. Note that a tall graphic, an unbreakable table, or successive keep-with-next paragraphs can force a topic to start on the next page even when it seems like enough space is available.

The online help for the print manual designer covers this and a lot more. These just happen to be "features" that have come up here several times before.

Good luck,
Dean

[Frank Gribble]

Thanks. In mine, however, there is no band for the Foreword. Or, at least, I don't see it.

I have bands for "Title", "Top Level Entry", "Level 2 Entry" through "Level 6 Entry", and a tiny one at the bottom that seems to be "Table of Contents Summary".

[Tim Green]

Hi Frank,

Only what is in the Table of Contents section can be printed in the table of contents so it must be there. Note that the Forword doesn't have its own band, it is just included in the Title band -- try making the title band higher, the Foreword entry may be covered by something else.

Another possibility is that you may be accidentally editing the wrong template. Go to Project Properties > Adobe PDF > PDF Layout and make sure that you are editing the right template file. Also, if you are outputting with the Print Preview or Print User Manual functions in the File menu note that you can assign different templates to both these functions directly in their dialogs, so here too it is easy to edit one template and actually use another.

[Frank Gribble]

Another possibility is that you may be accidentally editing the wrong template.

Errr... ummm... errr....

Well, that was embarrassing.

Thanks!