Stylesheets, Templates, and Documents
Stylesheets, Templates, and Documents
There are some fundamental differences between the PTC Arbortext Layout Developer, FOSI, and XSL document types and the way they work. The first step to working with PTC Arbortext Layout Developer is understanding the difference between PTC Arbortext Layout Developer templates and traditional stylesheets, and how PTC Arbortext Layout Developer templates are used to create documents.
The main difference between an PTC Arbortext Layout Developer template and a stylesheet is that a template becomes a document during its use. A stylesheet remains unchanged. PTC Arbortext Layout Developer templates can be thought of as empty documents as they only lack content and pages. Stylesheets act as reference material for an application or process to use to create something new.
PTC Arbortext Layout Developer documents are augmented templates, in that they include the content stream and formatted page information as well the style definitions, page layouts, and other definitions defined in the template. PTC Arbortext Layout Developer documents have the file extension .3d. A .3d file can be saved from the PTC ALD Preview in Arbortext Styler.
PTC Arbortext Layout Developer Templates
When using the PTC Arbortext Layout Developer— Desktop application, developers create a template. An PTC Arbortext Layout Developer template has the file extension .3f. It typically has the following parts:
• An autoexec script that contains commands to automate content loading, formatting, and output
• Pre-defined page layouts called by commands in PTC Arbortext Layout Developer tags
• Tags which define:
◦ Style definitions, including conditional formatting
◦ Color definitions for any named reusable colors
◦ Rule definitions for any non-standard rules
◦ Context matching rules that define associations between PTC Arbortext Layout Developer tags and with XML contexts (optional)
◦ Index and TOC definitions
◦ Footnote definitions
◦ Kerning and ligature tables
• Boilerplate text and graphical components, pre-loaded in the template to save time when opening a document
• An autoexit script that executes any script requirements when the document scripting has finished and the document is closed
PTC Arbortext Layout Developer Documents
An PTC Arbortext Layout Developer template (.3f) can be saved as a document (.3d) once it has been run, pages have been created and text content has been formatted. The saved document contains a copy of the source content stream and information on how to start each page, such as the position in the main content stream at which a page starts. The document also contains counter and JavaScript information that enables you to navigate to a page and see it formatted without having to reformat the whole document. Components such as graphics may either be loaded into the document or linked to it. A document saved from Arbortext Styler’s print preview contains links to graphics that have been saved to a temporary local location.
A saved document often has no relationship with the original template. It is good practice that a document remains self-contained, so that any changes made to it do not affect the original template. It is possible to use methods to maintain a link to the tags in the original template, but this is not recommended.
Best Practices
Use the term stylesheet when referring to Arbortext Styler’s stylesheets (.style files), template when referring to empty PTC Arbortext Layout Developer templates, and document when referring to the published job.
If using templates with linked tag libraries, ensure that the links are broken when saving a document to avoid document changes affecting the original template.