One of the most daunting parts of a DITA installation can be customising the output to PDF using the DITA Open Toolkit (OTK). It's a complicated job requiring expert knowledge of XSL-FO and XSL-T.
Now, JustSystems, Canadian publishers of the leading XML and DITA authoring system, XMetal Author, have teamed up with Australia's Turnkey Systems to provide users with a much easier way - the TopLeaf Plugin for XMetaL.
Available from Koala, this new software enables users with no 'expert' knowledge of, XML and DITA to speedily set up output styles to suit their own corporate PDF publishing requirements. TopLeaf integrates with XMetaL and provides an intuitive point and click interface, enabling authorised document administrators to set up and maintain sytle configurations to control attributes such as page margins, type fonts, colours, background images, multiple columns, page breaks, headers, footers, indexes ... and much much more. You can even opt to display change bars, strike through deletions, and highlight insertions in your PDF output.
Above: Map Manager tabbed user interface and colour
selector windows from TopLeaf
A key attraction of the system is that users can 'try-out' different options and see the PDF results almost immediately without having to keep re-generating the output from XMetaL each time - a great time saver! In this way, a user can quickly build up and fine tune a document style configuration until they are totally happy with it. Natuarlly each completed style configuration can be saved, so, at publication time, users can pick from a corporate library of output styles to suit the type of document content being processed.
Contact us to find out more about XMetaL and TopLeaf click here.
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Reviewed by
Robin Shobbrook,
Quality Manager
at Koala