Stylesheets

Stylesheets are a collection of style settings that control the appearance of a document when displayed in an editor or converted to a form of output. Style settings can include basic formatting information such as font size, paragraph spacing, and page layout, or more advanced formatting such as automatic generation of a table of content and an index.

Arbortext Editor accepts these stylesheet formats, which depend on the type of output you want:

• Editor view — Arbortext Styler (.style), and FOSI stylesheets

• Print and PDF — Arbortext Styler (.style), PTC ALD (.3f), FOSI, and XSL-FO stylesheets

• HTML File — Arbortext Styler (.style), FOSI, and XSL stylesheets

• HTML Help — Arbortext Styler (.style) and XSL stylesheets

• Web — Arbortext Styler (.style) and XSL stylesheets

• RTF — Arbortext Styler (.style) and XSL stylesheets

• EPUB — Arbortext Styler (.style) and XSL stylesheets

The stylesheet specified for Editor view will be used for any output that does not have its own stylesheet specification.

Arbortext Editor automatically lists valid stylesheets located in the document and document type directories in the Print and Publish dialog boxes. If you are using Arbortext Publishing Engine for publishing requests, the stylesheets located on the Arbortext PE server are displayed using the (pe) notation.

You can make a stylesheet automatically available by placing it in the Arbortext-path\custom\doctypes\doctype directory.

You can add stylesheets to the document and document type directories, specify stylesheet titles to display in the dialog boxes, and specify the output type for the stylesheets. You can also associate a stylesheet with a document and specify a stylesheet using a URL.

Following are some general criteria for evaluating which type of stylesheet to use:

• Arbortext Styler stylesheets (.style files) allow you to create a single stylesheet that can be used to control Arbortext Editor and Arbortext Publishing Engine Interactive display, to preview a document, and to publish for print, PDF, HTML File, HTML Help, web, EPUB, and RTF outputs. If you are using PTC ALD, Arbortext Styler can support preview and publishing for print and PDF.

While .style files are proprietary, you can export them as APP, FOSI, XSL-FO, XSL-EPUB, XSL-HTML, and XSL-Web stylesheets from Arbortext Styler.

For extensive information on Arbortext Styler, consult the User's Guide to Arbortext Styler.

• XSL-FO and XSL-HTML stylesheets are based on the XSL standard. XSL-FO stylesheets are used to produce print, PDF, and RTF outputs. XSL-HTML stylesheets are used to produce HTML output.

Refer to XSL-FO stylesheets and to the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) web site at www.w3.org for information on XSL.

XSL stylesheets exported from Arbortext Styler do not conform strictly to the XSL specification. They are designed be supported in other PTC applications such as Arbortext Publishing Engine. PTC cannot guarantee that they will work in other XSL-FO applications and do not support this use case.

• FOSI stylesheets are used to configure Arbortext Editor display, and to publish to print, PDF, and HTML File outputs. The FOSI standard is older than XSL, less flexible, and not widely supported.

The FOSI and XSL-FO print engines are on sustained support and do not receive enhancements or maintenance fixes. PTC ALD is the recommended engine for print/PDF output.

• Arbortext Styler — Use to create and edit stylesheets. If Arbortext Styler is part of your installation, the Arbortext Editor menu bar offers a Styler menu.

• FOSI Editor — Use to create and edit FOSI stylesheets.

You can obtain Arbortext Publishing Engine configuration information from the Help > Publishing Engine Configuration menu command. Arbortext Editor can also compare its publishing configuration with the Arbortext Publishing Engine publishing configuration using the Tools > Administrative Tools > Compare Config with Publishing Engine menu item.