Version, language and resolution selection for publishing
When you use Publish, you expect Content Manager to publish the version, language and resolution that you selected for your content. If for some reason no such selection is found, one is made for you following an algorithm based on your specific configuration.
Overview
The first stage of the publishing process is the selection of the content to be published, and the export of this content in a single location for processing. Thanks to the Baseline, for each object in the publication, we know which version of the object, and which language and resolution of the version, need to be exported. However in some cases no appropriate version is selected in the Baseline. It may happen for example when versions are created outside Publication Manager, which is the only tool that keeps track of versions inside a publication.
After export, all publishing processes can be applied to the exported content.
Properties used during selection and export
- At content selection:
- Working language. This property applies to a publication. It is defined when a publication object is created, and can be updated every time a new version or branch of the publication is created.
- Working resolution. This property applies to a publication. It is defined when a publication object is created, and can be updated every time a new version or branch of the publication is created.
- At export:
- Language combination. This property applies to a publication and to a publication output. It is defined when a publication object is created, and when a specific output for a publication is created. If the value is more than one language, then all the languages are published.
- Fallback language. This property applies to a publication and to a publication output. It is defined when a publication object is created, and when a specific output for a publication is created. Within a publication or an output format instance, the fallback language value can be different for topics, maps and illustrations.
- Resolutions. This property is applied to an output format. It is set by an administrator when the output format is configured in the Web Client. When the value is more than one resolution, then the first one is used in topics by default and the other ones can be used in specific customized publishing processes.
Rules used during selection and export
- At content selection:
- For topics, libraries and maps: the latest version with a language that matches the Working language is selected. If none is found, the missing object is selected.
- For illustrations: the latest version with both a language that matches the Working language and a resolution that matches the Working resolution is selected. If none is found, the missing object is selected.
- At export
- For topics, libraries and maps: for the selected objects, the languages that match the Language combination are exported. For each that is not found, a language that matches the Fallback language is selected. For each that is not found, a missing object is selected.
- For illustrations: for the selected objects, each language that matches any value of the Language combination and also pairs with one of the Resolutions values, is exported. For every language-resolution pair that is missing, a missing object is selected.
Results
All the exported content can be processed for publishing, and can be included in the resulting output. The status of the resulting output is calculated from the status of all the exported objects even if some of them are not included in the publication.
The illustrations are a special case: by default, only the ones with a resolution matching the first value set to Resolutions is linked to the topics in the resulting publication output. The other resolutions are used for custom publishing processing, such as the creation of an extended view of the image in a PDF for example.