Save entire manual to PDF

[mdslup]

Webhelp responsive has a nice way to print a topic of a manual, as seen here: https://i.imgur.com/SCrsFNo.jpg

However, I am getting multiple requests for a way to download the entire manual (all contents).

The only way I can think to do this is:

1. Generate the webhelp Responsive, as normal
2. Also generate a PDF
3. Create a reference in the map to download the whole PDF file

But I'm not satisfied with that, because I still have to do 2 generations instead of just 1. Is there a better way to do this?

[Costin]

Hi,

I'm afraid that, currently, the only way to generate PDF for the WbHelp output is the one that you already found.
We have an improvement request logged in our internal tracking system to make it possible to generate PDF on the fly for the WebHelp output.
Our development team will analyze the issue to see if they could implement an improvement in a future version of oXygen.
We will notify this thread when/if something will be implemented regarding this.

Best Regards,
Costin

[mdslup]

OK. It would be great if I could upload a CSS file, and have the webhelp resonsive use it to somehow generate a PDF based on Oxygen's PDF-CSS rules to generate something on the fly.

[ionela]

Hi,

Thank you for your feedback and these suggestions.
I have added your comments to the improvement request from our issue tracking tool.

Regards,
Ionela

[Kristine]

Hello!

Have there been any changes for the improvement request?


Thank you!

[Costin]

Hello,

Unfortunately, there is no progress so far and it seems there are no plans to include this feature in the close future, as it is considered only for the long term development.
We will notify this thread when / if this feature will get implemented.

Best Regards,
Costin

[chrispitude]

Hi Kristine,

We have a similar need, but this is a tricky and situation-dependent problem. Even if I had a magic wand that would implement the enhancement in Oxygen, I don't know how I would want it to work.

For example,

• How would you specify the CSS for the PDFs in this hybrid transformation?
• Do you want one massive PDF for everything, individual PDFs for each "manual" section, or something in-between?
• What if you need different CSS parameters or different DITAVAL conditions for each book in the online help collection?
• How do you specify where in the output directory each PDF goes?
• How would you reference the PDF from the top-level map to make it accessible from navigation?

DITA-OT project files might be useful for this. All the OLH/PDF deliverables could be defined in the project file, and an agreed-upon convention for PDF placement should allow the publications to link together. But we are in the early stages of evaluating WebHelp itself right now, so such explorations are several steps ahead of where we currently are...