PDF remains one of the most important output formats for technical documentation, offering a perfect balance between accessibility and print-ready formatting. Over the past several releases, WebWorks has significantly enhanced ePublisher's PDF XSL-FO Format capabilities, with the most substantial improvements arriving in the recent 2024.1 release. Let's explore how these enhancements can help you create more professional, customizable, and user-friendly PDF documentation.
The Evolution of ePublisher's PDF Capabilities
Before diving into the latest enhancements, it's worth noting how ePublisher's PDF output has evolved in recent years. The 2021 release marked a significant milestone with the upgrade to Apache FOP 2.6, which brought stronger default settings for paragraphs, lists, tables, and improved image handling in the PDF XSL-FO Format. These changes helped users achieve production-ready output with minimal configuration.
Subsequent releases continued to refine PDF output, with improvements to image alignment and handling in the 2022.1 release. Now, with ePublisher 2024.1, we've introduced our most comprehensive set of PDF enhancements yet, focusing on greater control, better customization options, and more intuitive settings.
Key PDF Enhancements in ePublisher 2024.1
Enhanced Title Page Formatting
The title page is often the first impression users have of your documentation. With ePublisher 2024.1, we've significantly improved title page formatting:
- Better Structure and Consistency: Title page elements (title, subtitle, publish date) now have improved formatting for more consistent and predictable results
- Style Name Control: You can now set specific style names for title page elements, including the publish date, giving you greater control over their appearance
- Variables and Metadata Support: Title pages, headers, and footers can now use variables and source metadata, allowing for dynamic content that automatically updates based on your source documents
Improved Pagination Controls
Pagination is crucial for creating professional PDF documents. The 2024.1 release includes several pagination improvements:
- More Intuitive Page Break Controls: We've replaced the somewhat confusing "Page break priority" option with the more intuitive "Start new page sequence" setting, making it easier to control page breaks in your document
- Automatic Page Numbering: The first body page now automatically starts with page number 1 when not explicitly configured, ensuring consistent page numbering
- Better List Handling: We've improved how lists break across pages, ensuring they display correctly no matter where they appear in your document
More Intuitive Layout Settings
We've also made several changes to make PDF XSL-FO layout settings more intuitive and user-friendly:
- Clearer Property Groups: The HTML property group has been renamed to "Layout" in the PDF XSL-FO Format, better reflecting its purpose
- Simplified Interface: We've removed some complex properties to simplify the interface and prevent confusion
- Smarter Default Settings: Several default settings have been optimized to streamline the output process without requiring manual configuration
Improved Bookmarks and Navigation
PDF bookmarks are essential for navigation, and we've made important improvements in this area:
- Independent Bookmarks: Bookmarks are no longer tied to the Table of Contents, giving you more flexibility in how you structure your document navigation
- Better File Naming: The project-wide PDF filename now uses the Merge Settings Title, creating more intuitive file naming
- Consistent PDF Links: When using Reverb 2.0, the PDF icon link now uses the project-wide generated PDF, ensuring consistency across your documentation
Benefits for Documentation Teams
These enhancements deliver several key benefits for technical writers and documentation teams:
- Greater Control: More granular control over title pages, pagination, and layout means you can create PDFs that precisely match your organization's branding and style requirements.
- Improved User Experience: Better bookmarks, consistent pagination, and cleaner layouts make your PDFs more navigable and user-friendly.
- Streamlined Workflow: More intuitive settings and sensible defaults reduce the time spent configuring PDF output, allowing you to focus on content creation.
- Enhanced Consistency: Support for variables and metadata ensures consistency across your documentation suite, with less manual updating required.
Style Designer Inheritance for PDF Styles
One particularly powerful enhancement in ePublisher 2024.1 is the improved Style Designer inheritance for target properties and options. This feature allows child styles to inherit properties from parent styles, significantly reducing the time needed to configure and maintain PDF styles.
For example, if you set specific PDF pagination properties on a parent paragraph style, all child styles will automatically inherit these settings unless explicitly overridden. This inheritance model makes it much easier to maintain consistent styling across large documentation sets while still allowing for exceptions where needed.
Conclusion
The PDF XSL-FO Format enhancements in ePublisher 2024.1 represent our ongoing commitment to providing technical writers with powerful, flexible tools for creating professional documentation. Whether you're producing user manuals, reference guides, or technical specifications, these improvements will help you create more polished, user-friendly PDF output with less effort.
We encourage all users to update to the latest build of ePublisher 2024.1 to take advantage of these enhancements. Visit our download page to get the latest version, and refer to the comprehensive release notes for detailed information on all changes.
As we continue to refine and enhance ePublisher's capabilities, we welcome your feedback on these PDF improvements and suggestions for future enhancements. Our goal remains to provide the most efficient, flexible documentation workflow possible, helping you deliver exceptional content to your users across all formats.