PDF Document Sections
The Document Sections tab on a Publishing Project (with the PDF Publishing Destination option selected) is where you go to choose what's going into your publication.
PDF Project Section Types
Every PDF Project must have at least one Body section, and this is created for you when you create a new PDF Publishing Project. This section will contain your dynamically published data using a Publishing Stylesheet that you have already set up. You can add any number of additional sections of these types:
Front Cover
This will be the first page of your publication. It comprises images and/or text that you specify. If used, it will always be the first Section.
Intro Pages
This section can contain any number of pages that you create. They can contain text and images. You can have multiple Intro Pages sections if you want. These pages would typically contain info about you, your company, a description of your products or services ... or whatever information or images you want to include.
Body
There must always be at least one Body section. You can have multiple Body sections. For example you might have one Body section to display your products, and another Body section to list all your part numbers.
Index
Add an index to the publication. You specify, in y our Publishing Stylesheet, which items to index (for example, product names, people's last names, part numbers, etc.)
End Matter
Similar to the Intro Pages section, this section can contain any text and images. For example, your terms and conditions, an order form, etc
Adding a Section
To add a section to your publication, simply double-click on its name in the list of Section Types. It will be added to the list of selected Sections in the appropriate order (eg a Front Cover section will added to the beginning of the document). You can re-order the sections by dragging and dropping them up or down in the list, although they must adhere to the positioning rules (eg a Cover Page must always be the first section).
Editing a Section
Select a Section in your document to see its Properties:
Inactive
If you don't want to publish a section, but you don't want to delete it, select the Inactive check box. It will remain as part of the project, but it won't be published.
Section Type:
The Type of the selected Section. You cannot change this.
Section Name:
You can change each section's name if you wish.
Starting Page No:
The page number for this section to start on. The default is Automatic; the Section's page number will continue on from the previous Section (or start at 1 if it's the first Section). You can click on the dropdown and choose Page Number: if you want the section to start at a specific page number - for example, if you have a number of preceding sections and you want the first Body section to start on Page 1.
Defining the contents of a Section
Double-click on a Section's image to open up an editing window in which you will be able to specify that section's contents.
The section design window is a design area where you place various text and image objects. In the example shown above, there is one text object labelled "Dynamic content". This is a default object that has been added to our Body section: it will contain the dynamically published data.
The objects can be moved around and resized within the design area, just like objects in a drawing program.
Adding Objects
To add a new Object to the page, right-click (control-click on Mac) anywhere in the grey area and choose the object that you want to add:
Defining an object's contents
So - we've got an object defined. Now we need to tell CatBase what is going in that object.
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Double-click the object, or
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Right-click on it and choose Edit Properties.
The view changes. What you see next depends on the type of object you're editing.
Dynamic Content
Page Object Types
Background Image
A picture that will be placed as the background to a page. Other items such as text or images can be placed on top of it.
Positioning (Pixels)
The coordinates of the 4 corners of the object. You can change these coordinates by manually resixing the object in the Deisng view, or - if you want to use precise positioning - you can enter the values here.
Border
Do you want the object to have a visible border? You can select the border style here, and enter the weight in pixels.
Number of columns
Enter a number for the number of columns you would like the text to be set in.
Gutter
This is the space between the columns (if there is more than 1 column).
Publishing Stylesheet
Select the Publishing Stylesheet that you want to use to fill the dynamic content area. The data will be "poured" into the Dynamic content area when you publish it, creating as many pages as needed to accommodate the quantity of data being published.
(See this Tutorial for more information about Publishing Stylesheets).
Data Set
If you have defined any Sets (Custom Filters), you can choose the Set to publish in this publication. The default is All Records.
See this Tutorial for more info about Sets.