The next menu on the menu bar is Preview.
The command Process Layout starts the generating process and allows you to view intermediate steps during the creation of your layout.
Process multilayout starts the generation of a multilayout document, which will be described later in this manual.
The menu item Layout sequence offers you the chance to combine layouts from independent XSLfast files to form a new file. This will also be described in a later chapter.
The command Layout settings offers you options to modify the layout settings:
Input/Output settings
In the area Input on the tab Input/Output settings you see first the XML file that you selected for your layout. If you would like to choose a different file, enter the complete path or click on the button with the three dots to open a file browser window. You can also edit the selected file here with the button "Edit” if you specified the path to a text editor in File -> Preferences.
The function Do not bind layout to top node allows to select the root node "/" in the layout. This root node can be used as a general node to support the creation of layouts with different XML files containing different root nodes.
In Output you specify the type of document you want to generate.
XSLfast offers you to generate documents in the PDF format or the XSL-FO format, which can be used with XSL-FO editing tools. If you activate the check box Open in Viewer, the result file is automatically opened in the matching viewer after its generation.
Choose the FO processor (Renderer) with the radio button of the same name. Please keep in mind that results from different rendering programs may look different, because not every Renderer can process every function of XSL.
Also you specify the directory where the generated files should be saved in Output file. By default it is set to ..\output but of course you can select another directory. Don’t forget to enter a name for the file.
XSLfast also creates a temporary XSLT output file every time the layout is processed. This file contains the information to insert the data from the XML source and the preliminary formatting structure. By default this file is named tmp.xsl and saved in ..\tmp but of course you can specify another name and directory for it.
You also specify the name and the target directory for the XSL-FO output. This file contains the contents of the entire document, which are inserted from the XML source and the formatting instructions. This file can be opened to read in order to check the processes that have been performed with a click on the "View" button, however it cannot be edited here. Manual modifications of this file are overwritten with every processing of the layout.
Generation Options
This tab provides four options, which influence the output:
The option Suppress custom entity descriptions is used if you added custom entity descriptions to the target XSL and XSL-FO files, but do not want them to be used in the output.
Suppress custom namespaces does the same with namespaces that you added. Both, custom namespaces and custom entity descriptions are described later in this manual.
XSLfast offers two predefined variables: CurrentDate (which reads the system time) and IMAGEEXT (which allows e.g. to use image names created by combining the productID with a certain file extension like ".gif" to avoid time-consuming maintenance of image pools). If you do not want to use these variables, check the check box Do not generate system wide variables that will suppress the use of these variables.
With the check box Omit text formatting templates you suppress the use of the HTML tags for text.
Additional templates
The tab Additional templates allows you to edit templates used in this layout file, not matter if they are external (other layout files) or internal and also it allows you to edit internal variables. External templates files are used during the processing of the layout and contain user defined templates and global variables. They can be edited after clicking the "Edit" button and must be well-formed XML files containing XSL code. This code is copied into and used in the generated XSL output but it is not checked for errors at that time.
XSLfast offers you to use multiple external template files in your layouts. It is possible to specify external templates files of two formats: .xsl and .tpl.
You can Add, Edit or Remove external templates. To add a template press the "Add" button in the right area of the External templates section. Select the file you want to use as an external template in the file dialog.
The file you have chosen will appear in the left area of the External templates section. If you add several external templates, they all will be shown in a list:
If you want to remove or edit a template, select it in the list and click "Edit" or "Remove".
To use external templates in your layout place a Call template element on the sheet and double click it. The Call template editor opens:
In the Call template select box you can choose one of the templates to be called:
Note: In the select box of the Call template element all templates used in the layout, both external and internal will be displayed.
Internal templates are handled exactly the same way but they are not externally saved. They can be edited with the "Edit" button.
Via the Internal Import/Include function it is possible to specify XSL files which are then used in the layout. An include is basically a reference to the entire external file, which is then imported at runtime. An import is also a reference to an external file. You should use import rather than include when you want to overwrite definitions (e.g. styles) inside your layout.
Press the Edit button and there will open Edit internal imports/includes window:
To specify the XSL file you want to include, enter <xsl:include href="name.xsl"/>. This will include the file with the name "name.xsl", which should be placed in the same folder as the current XSL file, but you can also define the complete path to the XSL file that you want to include or import.
Attention: The referenced files cannot be edited here.
The Internal variables function offers you to specify global variables for this layout, e.g. if your XML images are located on another server and you need to specify the basic URL. After the definition of the variables it is possible to use them in your layout.
Example: You can call for a defined variable like this: <xsl:value-of select="$var"/>.
Note: You should specify the entire path if you want to use elements from the XML source in the definition of variables.
To create templates that only apply for the current layout and cannot be reused in other layouts, use the function Internal templates. These can e.g. be called via XSL code elements.
Layout description
The fourth tab Layout description offers you the option to add some meta information to the layout:
The field Author is filled with your user name in Windows, but you can also edit this field.
This meta information is saved with the layout file but is not contained in the output in any way.
Security
The last tab contains information on access rights for the layout:
You have two possibilities to restrict the access to a layout. The first way is the Exclusive access. If you use this option, a password is required to open the layout in the first place, but then full access to the layout is granted to those users who have the password.
On the next start of this layout the user will be asked to enter the password if you select to use Exclusive access:
The second way is the Modification access. This option allows you to restrict the access to the layout in two ways:
If the user does not have the correct password, the access to the layout is ReadOnly, meaning that the user can view the layout, make some modifications which last only during this session and even generate PDF or XSL output, but he cannot save the modified layout. In this case the user should click the button "Read only". If the user possesses the correct password, he has access to all available functions after clicking the button "Ok".