PDF Generator Overview
The is a user-friendly publishing engine that uses CSS for output styling. Thanks to that, many teams can manage PDF output styling in-house. To create custom PDF transformation scenarios you need to be assigned the Administrator role in Heretto CCMS.
You access PDF Generator configuration
interface from the Main Menu .
PDF Generator includes a DITA to HTML processor and a fast PDF publishing engine that uses CSS to style the PDF output. In addition to CSS, for advanced customizations, PDF Generator enables you to use HTML and XSLT. PDF Generator uses the Prince formatter (formerly Prince XML) as the publishing engine and supports the following CSS specifications.
In contrast to PDF Generator, other publishing engines (for example, DITA Open Toolkit (DITA-OT)) use much less user-friendly markup languages for PDF styling.
Once you create and save a publishing scenario, you can use it to transform your DITA content. The publishing scenarios are editable so you can change the styling associated with a scenario at any time.
Important Considerations
PDF Generator publishing jobs have a maximum running time of ten (10) minutes, after which they time out. Publishing duration depends on several factors, including:
Content volume - The total amount of content in a map
Image specifications - Number and resolution of images
XSLT complexity for transforming DITA to HTML
HTML complexity for transforming to PDF
The Prince formatter has a limitation that prevents it from processing SVG files larger than 10 MB. Ensure that your SVG images do not exceed this size. Otherwise, they will not be included in the output generated by PDF Generator.
PDF Generator includes a Preview feature that enables you to quickly preview output without leaving the Content Editor or generating publishing jobs. Consider this information when using the Preview feature:
Previews are not saved as publishing jobs in the Output tab.
Preview does not support conditional processing (filtering content with DITAVALs).
When previewing maps for which a context map is set in the Context menu, the context map is not used and variables are not resolved (replaced with content). Previewing individual topics in the same manner resolves variables. For more information about context maps, see Context Maps.
When previewing maps that contain a warehouse map with variables, the warehouse map is used and variables are resolved. For more information about warehouse maps, see Variable Reuse.