Output formatting

[waphs]

I'm slowwwly getting to grips with the whole XML thing, so forgive me if this question is laughably simple...

How do I format the font, page layout and general appearance of my page when outputting from XML to PDF/HTML?

I keep reading that XSLT is for transforming XML, but I don't know if this is what I need, especially after watching the online video tutorial for XSLT, which just left me totally confused.

And then there is CSS. Does CCS control how the XML looks on screen in oxygen only, or does it also determine how the finished text is formatted in the PDF/HTML output?

So, I'd be most grateful if someone could explain how pages are laid out (headers, footers, indents, margins, etc) and how text is formatted (font, text size, color, etc) when outputting from XML (DITA) to PDF or HTML, preferably using the tools that are available in oXygen.

Thanks

Richard

[Radu]

Dear Richard,

Thank you for contacting us.

First of all about CSS:
When editing in the Author page, Oxygen uses CSS to apply styling to the edited document so that it looks close to the generated output. The XML itself does not contain any styling information.
The CSS files used by Oxygen for editing DITA Topics which can be found in the OXYGEN_INSTALL_DIR\frameworks\dita\css_classed directory will not be used in any way to generate output.

Oxygen uses the DITA Open Toolkit to publish the DITA Maps in various formats.

When transforming a DITA Map to XHTML you can specify your custom CSS file so that the generated XHTML output will have a certain style. This is done by editing the Oxygen transformation scenario and setting the args.css parameter to point to your custom CSS file.

When generating PDF output from an opened DITA Map you can choose between the "PDF IDIOM Plugin" and the "Legacy PDF" scenario types.

For any of the types of output which can be produced XSLT stylesheets will be used to transform the XML content to the final format.

In order to customize output you will have to modify the used stylesheets.
For example, to customize the output of a "PDF IDIOM FO Plugin" transformation you can edit the stylesheets in the OXYGEN_INSTALL_DIR/frameworks/dita/DITA-OT/demo/fo/cfg/fo/attrs.
Each one has certain parameters with values which affect the output.

My advice for you is to join the DITA Users list.
You can find more useful links here:
http://www.oxygenxml.com/forum/post1140 ... ces#p11407

Regards,
Radu