Stylesheet Information

When Arbortext Publishing Engine starts, it locates stylesheets available from the Arbortext PE server and offers them to Arbortext Editor users. Stylesheets found on the Arbortext PE server appear in the Stylesheet list preceded by the notation (pe). Stylesheets and framesets on your local system are ignored.

The choices in the Stylesheet can be of the following types:

PTC Arbortext Layout Developer (PTC ALD) template file. This type is only available if PTC ALD is installed in your Arbortext Styler environment or on the Arbortext Publishing Engine server.

You may see differences between local and remote publishing results for identically named stylesheets. There is no mechanism to synchronize stylesheets or framesets between the client and the server, nor can Arbortext Editor send a local stylesheet or frameset to the Arbortext Publishing Engine along with the document.

If you are experiencing a lengthy delay when publishing your document, it's possible that the .style file on the server may not be the current version. Arbortext Publishing Engine can automatically update some older versions of .style files in memory for the duration of the publishing process, but they are not saved for future use. If you suspect .style files are not up to date on the Arbortext PE server, notify your site administrator.

Arbortext Publishing Engine can automatically find stylesheets placed in the Arbortext-path\custom\doctypes\doctype directory on the Arbortext PE server. The setting of the allowComposeStylesheetList attribute of the Options element is configured in the document type configuration file (.dcf) on the server. The order of stylesheets presented in the Stylesheet list can be controlled by configuring PEStylesheetOrder in the .dcf.

You can use the following options to specify the default publishing stylesheets:

Be aware of the following when setting these on the Arbortext Editor client:

• If you try to set the location to a local path for any type of stylesheet, you will get an error that the stylesheet is not the name of a stylesheet on the server. The following example produces an error if Arbortext Publishing Engine publishing is enabled but the stylesheet specified does not exist on the server:

However, if the stylesheet specified in the path does exist on the server, the stylesheet of the same name will still be offered in the Stylesheets list in publishing dialog boxes.

• If you try to set the location to a stylesheet file name only (no preceding path), Arbortext Publishing Engine looks for a stylesheet with a matching name. The following example would succeed if a stylesheet of the same name exists in a location where the Arbortext PE server looks for stylesheets.

A document can reference a stylesheet using a stylesheet association. The stylesheet association can specify a URL or a file path. However, when you are using Arbortext Publishing Engine, a path is not valid for the server. If a stylesheet association is specified using a path, Arbortext Publishing Engine will attempt to locate a stylesheet of the same name on the Arbortext PE server (meaning that the path to the stylesheet is ignored, and only the stylesheet name is used). If an existing stylesheet matches the name, it will automatically appear in the Stylesheet list for the Print and Publish dialog boxes preceded by the (pe) notation.

If you want to be notified that a stylesheet association uses a stylesheet that is not installed on the Arbortext PE server, you can set promptstylesheetassociations in Tools > Preferences > Advanced to display a warning that a stylesheet association will be ignored. However, if a stylesheet of the same name exists on the server, it will still be offered in the Stylesheet list of publishing dialog boxes. The preference setting is saved for future sessions.