Output Manual Directions

These are the steps used to create the print manual from the WIKI.

Set up the Includes list page.

The current version of the print manual contents is generated using the page ManualOutput. It consists of a list of "Include" commands that draw in the various elements from their existing pages.

For testing and fine-tuning purposes, you can also use

TestPDFOutput - Contains just a couple of include commands

TestPDFOutput2 - Contains a working version of all the includes, some of which were not used in the final print manual

Set the pdf output parameters.

These parameters appear at the top of all three includes list pages:

##pdf footerleft t##pdf no-links unchecked##pdf extra-titleauthor Planetary Science Institute##pdf extra-dynamiccodeblock unchecked##pdf pagemode document##pdf headfootsize 10.5##pdf size letter##pdf style book##pdf permissionprint unchecked##pdf footermiddle .##pdf firstpage p1##pdf permissionmodify unchecked##pdf toclevels 1##pdf tocheadermiddle .##pdf extra-dynamiccodeblock-break unchecked##pdf extra-codeblocklinenumbers unchecked##pdf permissioncopy unchecked##pdf extra-dynamiccodeblock-middot unchecked##pdf footerright 1##pdf headerleft h##pdf fontsize 10.5##pdf jpeg 100##pdf extra-titlecopyright Copyright 2016 Planetary Science Institute##pdf headerright .##pdf headingfont sans-boldoblique##pdf numbered unchecked##pdf bodyfont helvetica##pdf extra-titledocnumber 1.00A##pdf tocfooterleft t##pdf titletext SPC Software User Manual##pdf permissionannotate unchecked

/!\ These parameters only affect the content if you output the manual using CreatedPDFOutput from the More Actions: dropdown menu.

This may not be an exhaustive list of pdf parameters. To set these up, you can use CreatePDFOutput, set the parameters using the tabs (Input, Output, Page, etc.) and then click on the Remember form button. Copy the results and paste them at the top of the includes list page you create or want to modify.

You can also edit the parameters once they're in the includes list page.

Open the includes list page.

/!\ When you open the includes list page, the contents will be formatted like any other wiki page. This is not necessarily the print format.

The contents from the includes list page are formatted based on the wiki system's CSS and your theme or user CSS settings. If none of these are set, the format may be set by your browser settings.

Choose Print View from the More Actions: dropdown.

/!\ The content's format is now controlled by the settings in common.css and print.css from the WIKI setup.

The contents are formatted for print output. You can dump the contents to a printer, to a file, or save as .html code. When I tried these options, they did not allow me as much flexibility to manipulate the contents. Ultimately, I chose to copy/paste so that I could use another system to manipulate the content.

Copy and Paste the content to another tool.

Copy/Paste to Word allowed me to take both the content and the format of the entire document's content. I then used styles in Word to format the numbered headings and create the table of contents and other final document elements.

Notes on other options.

I tried Render as DocBook, RenderAsOpenDocument, and CreatePDFDocument to generate the content of the print manual. None of these options produced as clean an output for me as simple copy/paste from Print View.

Although it's possible to do a quick and dirty PDF of the manual using CreatePDFDocument and setting all the parameters, it's about as fast to copy/paste and then use any word processing or text layout software to control page setup.

(Compiled by BM)