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Publishing a PDF

You can use XML Professional Publisher ( XPP) to format and paginate your publication and create a PDF, or you can publish a PDF using a third-party PDF publishing engine.

Before you begin

If you will use XPP, both XPP and XPP RESTful Web Services must be installed and configured. If using a third-party PDF publishing engine, you must perform additional setup (see "Configuring third-party output formats").

Before publishing a very large publication, increase the Tomcat session-timeout on the Contenta Web server to be long enough to encompass the time it takes to export all files from Contenta to the file system.

About this task

When you publish a PDF, you select the publication modules, applicability, format, and other options. The publishing options that are available in your publishing configuration may vary.

Procedure

  1. In Contenta S1000D, select the desired Configuration, Project, or PModule object.
  2. Select Tools, and then select S1000D Publish.
  3. In the Publications field, select one or more PMs that you want to publish.
  4. If any of the selected PMs has applicability, perform the following steps:
    1. Select Set Applicability.
      The Publication Module Applicability window opens.
    2. Select a PM.
    3. Indicate the content that you want to be rendered.
      If a check box is not selected or a text field does not contain a valid value, the content with that applicability will be rendered in the PDF output.
    4. Select Apply Applicability.
      The applicability that you select here applies until you close the browser.
  5. In the Formats field, select one of the following:
    • If using XPP, select A4 or 8.5" x 11"
    • To use a third-party PDF publishing engine, select Contenta to name-of-your-PDF-publishing-engine.
  6. Optionally, select Save Exported Files.
    This preserves the temporary files so that you can use them for troubleshooting.
  7. Select the Resolve CIR References check box to resolve references to CIR items, which are available in S1000D Issue 4.1 and later. Clear this check box (which is selected by default) if your publication does not include CIRs or if you don't need to resolve CIRs during this publish.
    Resolving CIR references in a larger publication can slow down the publish process.
  8. Select the Get Latest Content check box to obtain the latest versions of reusable components (warnings, cautions, support equipment, supplies, spares) from the CSDB repository. Clear this check box (which is selected by default) to output the versions of reusable components in each data module, which may not be the latest versions, or if your site is not using the Contenta S1000D reusable components functionality, that is, not storing reusable components in the CSDB repository.
  9. XPP only:
    1. Scale Graphics
      This option scales graphics to Best Fit (the width is set to full).
    2. Save XPP Job
      This option retains the job directory on the XPP server.
  10. Select Publish.
    While Publish is running, progress messages are displayed in the Publish window.
  11. After Publish completes, select View Log, then scroll to the bottom of the publish log.
  12. Select the link to open the PDF that you just published.
    The PDF opens in a new browser window. The PDF file name is unique and is comprised of the PM name, time stamp, and process ID.
  13. If Publish completed with errors or warnings, scroll through the publish log to find the errors or warnings, which are highlighted (yellow background). For example, Publish warns about any missing or invalid WCN targets:

    [WARNING] Cannot find BRAKE-AAA-DA1-10-00-00AA-251A-A_FR-FR in Contenta Database

Example