Extra PDF output option

[Greg Smith]

Our main output is interactive chm, but we also generate two PDF formats. One is intended for viewing with a PDF reader and is full of links. The other is for people who like a printed manual and is generated using Print Manual with the Black Text option and we route this through a PDF printer.

Please, could you allow us two separate Adobe PDF outputs so that I can set up both with the Task Manager output and also so I do not (as I just did) inadvertently send the PDF output to a printer and wastes 800+ single-sided pages after H&M decided to forget which printer was selected. For this to work we would need to be able to separate the two output with the IF ... ENDIF feature.

Alternatively, if this is already possible, how do you do it?

[Tim Green]

Hi Greg,

You can also generate a "plain" PDF directly, without having to route through Print Manual and a PDF printer driver. However, you can't currently switch those options as part of your build settings, because they are only available in the project settings in Configuration > Publishing Options > PDF > PDF Layout and then the option "Similar to a printed manual". We'll look into ways of making this switchable -- possibly by moving these settings to the PDF template. Then you would just make two copies of the template for your different output types.

[Greg Smith]

Yes; I know I can do one or the other... We have just weaned our customers off the hand-generated Word document (which did look lovely, but was nearly as much work again as generating the H&M stuff), but a lot of them really do like being able to print out sections of the manual. The PDF viewer output just looks terrible when printed, and in any case there are all sorts of differences as stuff that works with links is hopeless when printed.

You've really brought this on yourselves by improving the printed output.

Thanks for being so responsive. Always a pleasure to deal with you guys.

[Greg Smith]

I had hoped that you would address this in HM7. You seem to have added an option in HM7 for "Highlight hotspots in PDF"... but I guess this is for image hotspots. I would like an additional option to omit all the links entirely "For printing, no links".

[Tim Green]

Hi Greg,

I had hoped that you would address this in HM7. You seem to have added an option in HM7 for "Highlight hotspots in PDF"... but I guess this is for image hotspots. I would like an additional option to omit all the links entirely "For printing, no links".

You can do this by changing the PDF settings from Interactive PDF Document to Similar to Printed Manual. If page referrers are not on that will automatically switch underlining links off as well. If referrers are on, you will also have to switch them and/or link underlining off if you don't want to have them. However, that does mean changing it in the project every time you publish, because there are no skin options for this for PDF.

[Greg Smith]

I'm not sure I understand how this helps (unless I am missing something you can do in the Task Manager).

I am talking about what you can set up in the Publish Task Manager. I'd like to just fire of my Tasks and generate .chm, an interactive .pdf and a plain, printer-only .pdf. At the moment I have to remember to also do the Print Manual option. A small inconvenience, I know, but it is one more think to check off on each release as I only generate the pdf output for releases (every few months) and I really do like to automate things with a minimum number of steps.

[Tim Green]

Hi Greg,

It doesn't help in the Task Manager because it's a project option -- that's why I added the caveat that you have to switch it in the project every time you use it. However, what you can do is use command line compiling and create custom XML configuration files that you can include in the command line with the /O= skin switch. Then you can publish both versions in a single operation by putting the command lines in a batch file. It would look something like this:

Code: Select all

"c:\Program Files (x86)\EC Software\HelpAndManual7\HELPMAN.EXE" ".\BulletTest.hmxz" /PDF="E:\TMG\Documents\BulletTestPrint.pdf" /I=PDF /O=pdf_print.xml
"c:\Program Files (x86)\EC Software\HelpAndManual7\HELPMAN.EXE" ".\BulletTest.hmxz" /PDF="E:\TMG\Documents\BulletTestInteractive.pdf" /I=PDF /O=pdf_interactive.xml

Here are the contents of the pdf_print.xml file

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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<helpproject xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="helpproject.xsd" version="1.8" isskin="true" isrepository="false">
  <config>
<config-group name="pdf">
	<config-value name="createhotspots">0</config-value>
	<config-value name="linkcolor">-1</config-value>
	<config-value name="createoutline">0</config-value>
	<config-value name="outlinesnumbered">0</config-value>
	<config-value name="insertseealso">0</config-value>
	<config-value name="insertseealsostyle">0</config-value>
	<config-value name="ignoreblank">0</config-value>
</config-group>
  </config>
</helpproject>

And here are the contents of the pdf_interactive.xml file:

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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<helpproject xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="helpproject.xsd" version="1.8" isskin="true" isrepository="false">
  <config>
    <config-group name="pdf">
	<config-value name="createhotspots">1</config-value>
	<config-value name="linkcolor">16711680</config-value>
	<config-value name="createoutline">1</config-value>
	<config-value name="outlinesnumbered">1</config-value>
	<config-value name="insertseealso">1</config-value>
	<config-value name="insertseealsostyle">1</config-value>
	<config-value name="ignoreblank">1</config-value>
</config-group>
  </config>
</helpproject>

Explanation of the settings:

<config-value name="createhotspots">1</config-value>
Active hyperlinks. Setting this to 1 turns hyperlinks on, 0 turns them off.

<config-value name="linkcolor">16711680</config-value>
This is the color of the active hyperlinks. -1 turns color and underlines off, the value above is blue.

<config-value name="createoutline">1</config-value>
This activates the Bookmarks TOC displayed in Adobe Reader and other PDF readers. 1 is on, 0 is off.

<config-value name="outlinesnumbered">1</config-value>
Setting this to 1 makes the Bookmarks TOC numbered, 0 makes it unnumbered.

<config-value name="insertseealso">1</config-value>
This activates the page referrers. 1 is on, 0 is off.

<config-value name="insertseealsostyle">1</config-value>
This is the page referrer style. They are numbered starting at 0, so 1 would be the second one in the drop-down list.

<config-value name="ignoreblank">1</config-value>
This is the ignore blank pages option. If it is set to 1 no blank pages will be inserted to force pages to start on odd or even pages. You generally want this on for interactive style and off for print style.

[Greg Smith]

Er, OK. Thank you for the detailed explanation of how to achieve this.