How to set page/browser preview for XMetal as HTML output

[ug4jee]

Hi All,

Iam not able to view the page preview or browser preview as the html output for XML content. Iam using XMetal Author.

When I preview for Page Preview it shows the content in text format, excluding the titles and other formats, only the heading shows correct but remaining content shows as simple text.

Please guide/help me in setting this to view as html for xml content. Provide steps.

-Jee

[Derek Read]

This seems to be the same question asked in another post. Was the answer not clear? The answer was posted here: http://forums.xmetal.com/index.php?topic=154.msg484#msg484

[ug4jee]

I do not get the correct one, still not able to set the preview in browser preview.

could you please provide steps to achieve this....?

[Derek Read]

OK, my mistake. I see that you have posted this to General XMetaL Discussion, so I assume you are not working with DITA (the other posting I referenced is specific to DITA).

Please refer to the XMetaL Developer Programmers Guide for setting up PDF output for all other document types besides DITA. The relevant section is called "The Formatting Object interface" and may require you to create a least one macro. That macro will call the API previewPDF(), also described in the XMetaL Developer Programmers Guide. You you may also wish to create other macros that call saveAsPDF(), XMLToPDFSetup and perhaps even the HTML-related APIs.

I think this section of the documentation is quite good. We have had many clients successfully implement solutions based on those instructions.

[ug4jee]

Thank you Derek, for brief information.

The other clarification I had is, when I was using Xmetal ver3* I do not face this issue, the default setting was set to get the HTML output when I wish to view as browser preview, but when I migrated to Xmetal Author it acts pretty differ. As I donot know about these settings and felt difficulty.

Is there a chance to get the default settings as we get for ver 3*, when I reinstall Xmetal author?

Thanks,
-Jee

[Derek Read]

If you have not modified the multipleOutput.mcr file located in the Startup folder then it should automatically do a basic transformation to HTML for previewing in Browser Preview. The scripts in that macro try to automatically generate XSLT to transform your XML into HTML. Because this is meant for preview only the CSS styling is embedded into each element inside the HTML. It is based on the styling used to display the document during editing in Author's TagsOn or Normal view (we have a DLL that reads your dtdname.css file and transforms it into XSLT). If this is working the files that are generated will have the following names, using DocBook (docbookx.dtd) as an example:

docbookx_HTML.xsl
docbookx_HTML_Style.xsl

These files are generated in the same location as your DTD's CSS file (in this example, the folder that docbookx.css is located in). In most cases that will be the same folder as the DTD (in this example: docbookx.dtd). If this does not occur then I suspect you may not have permission to write to that folder or the multipleOutput.mcr file has been modified or removed.

XMetaL Author versions prior to 5.5 will attempt to write into the Program Files folder and that is restricted in Vista and for limited users on XP. The 5.5 release is Vista / Limited User savvy and corrects that problem.

The files above are actually created when the function XMLToHTMLSetup() is run, but it is set to run (by default unless overridden as with our DITA functionality) when switching to Browser Preview even if you have not specifically implemented a macro that calls it.

Also, in most cases we don't expect people to use these XSLT files as is, though you can if you like. It is more common to replace this automatically generated XSLT with something professionally designed if you wish to use this method to transform to HTML for final output.