PDF output from RH9 WebHelp

[Guest]

I am asked to publish some WebHelp content as PDF prior to the infrastructure being available to publish WebHelp.

My wish is to publish it as PDF but not with a "Printed documentation" look. I want to create a PDFthat looks like Web pages. What is the best way to do this?

My thought is to publish to Word, then tweak and then save as PDF.

In RH 9 , what tools are available for creating a good-looking HTML output from Word?

[Peter Grainge]

So you want your printed output (PDF) to look the same as your help pages, correct? Two options.

USE A CSS FILE

When you generate the printed output, select the same CSS for the printed output. Whether or not that is acceptable depends on your online help CSS. As an alternative, you can create a print variant of that CSS so that the fonts are all the same except for say the size. Specify that CSS when you create the Word document / PDF.

USE A WORD TEMPLATE

Much the same. You define the styles in your Word template to give the desired result.

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Either way, it's usually best to generate to Word first so that you can tidy up things like page breaks.

See the Printed Documentation pages on my site.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[Guest]

Thank you Peter. I don't need the PDF output to look exactly like my HTML (even if it were possible, which it isn't). But I want the PDF output to be in a style of presentation optimised for online reading and navigating (rather than printing). There seem to be a number of limitations with both the template and the CSS approach.

For example, I can force the page size and orientation of the PDF output by modifying the style map template. But some settings don't seem to come across: headers, footers, two-column layout. It seems that RH9 overrides these settings when it produces its "print" output. So the clean-up tasks post-generation render this effort impractical in cases where the source files will be changing frequently. I suppose a clever macro writer could automate the cleanup tasks, but I don't happen to have one at my disposal.

[Peter Grainge]

Headers and footers not coming across is a long standing complaint. The more people who report a bug or request a feature, the more likely it is to be actioned. Please follow this link.

http://www.Adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform&product=38

I've never tried two column layout but I'm not surprised they don't work. To be honest, no one has ever sent me a help project with a two column layout but on line you would have one long column on the left and whatever on the right, translating that into document pages would be quite a task.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge