Basic Working Procedures > Single Sourcing

In addition to varying the content of your output you will often also want to vary the layout and appearance of different versions of your project when you publish it. How you do this and what options are available depends on the output format you are using.

The HTML templates used in WebHelp and CHM are stored in your project and are fully editable. You can have multiple templates for topics stored in a single project but only one version of the templates for the navigation panes (TOC, Index and Search) used in WebHelp. The multiple topic templates are primarily useful for having different layouts for different topics within the same project.

If you have the Professional or Server version of Help & Manual you can save all the templates in your project in a "skin" that you can then apply to other projects to change their layout.

The HTML topic page templates define the basic layout of your topic pages in HTML-based output formats. When you publish your project the template provides everything in the page except the actual topic content, including headers and footers, any JavaScript functionality and so on. Normally your project only has one topic page template called "Default" and this is used for all topics. You can define additional templates and then assign them to individual topics by selecting the template for the topic in the Topic Options tab below the main editor window. See HTML topic page templates for full details.

If you want to use different topic page templates for individual topics in different versions of your project without using a skin (see below) you need to use snippets:

1.Create the topic itself in the Project Files > Topics section (not in the TOC). This will create a topic without a TOC entry, which is what we want here because we are only using this topic for copying.

2.Set the build options of the topic to "none" so that the actual file is not included in your output.

3.Create two or more empty topics in the TOC in the positions where you want to have the different versions of your topics.

4.In both topics, insert the topic file created in step 1 as a linked snippet. See Re-using content with snippets for full instructions.

5.In the Topic Options tab of each topic, select the HTML page template that you want to use for that topic.

6.Apply the build options in the TOC to include and exclude the topic versions as required.

Normally, you will want to change the entire layout of your project for different purposes. With Help & Manual Professional you can do this with "skins", which save all the HTML templates in your project in a special file that you can apply to any project when you publish it to an HTML-based format. When you do this, all the HTML templates in the project are replaced with those in the skin. The skin can also include variable definitions, Baggage files and text and paragraph styles.

You can also use multiple HTML topic page templates for different topics in skins, provided the project you apply the skin to uses the same template names. For example, if your original project uses HTML topic page templates called Default, PageA and PageB these will be replaced by the versions in the skin if the skin also contains HTML topic page templates called Default, PageA and PageB.

1.Edit the HTML templates in a project to get the layout and effects you want. If you create multiple topic page templates make sure that their names match those used in the projects you want to format with the skin. See Using HTML Templates for details.

2.Select Save As... in the File menu and save the project as a skin. The skin can also contain variable definitions, text and paragraph styles and Baggage files. If you include styles, their names must also match those used in the projects you want to format with the skin.

3.When you publish another project to an HTML-based format select the skin created in step 2 in the Compile with skin: field in the Publish dialog. This will replace the templates, variables, Baggage files and styles in the project with those from the skin.

See Transforming your output with skins for more details.

The layout of your PDF output is defined in special layout files called print manual templates, with the extension .mnl. You can edit and create these templates with the Manual Designer program included with Help & Manual, which has extensive help and tutorials of its own.

Like skins for HTML-based formats, PDF print manual templates can be selected in the Publish dialog with a single click. This makes it possible to apply a completely different look and feel and/or corporate branding to a document in seconds. In addition to the general page layout, the PDF template defines the front and back cover pages, the layout of the table of contents, additional pages like the Foreword and end notes and intro pages for top level topics, user-defined pages, headers and footers, page and section numbering styles and so on.

See PDF and Printed Manuals for full details and instructions.

Help & Manual can generate two different kinds of eBooks: Windows EXE eBooks and ePub eBooks. A number of pre-designed layout templates for EXE eBooks are included. Formatting options in ePub eBooks are quite limited and alternative templates are not an option because the strictness of the ePub format means that the templates should not be edited.

See the chapters on ePub eBooks and Windows Exe eBooks in the Publishing section for details.

Word RTF is really only designed for creating printed documents and it is not a very good choice as a documentation format. If you want to provide a printable version of your documentation use PDF, if you want to provide an interactive help system use CHM or WebHelp, if you want to provide an eBook use ePub or Windows EXE eBooks.

There are no templates for Word RTF documents. The only page formatting options available are set in Project Explorer > Configuration > Publishing Options > MS Word RTF, where you can set things like paper size and styles for headers, footers, headings and the table of contents. These settings cannot be saved in an external template that can be applied to projects when you publish, they can only be set in the project itself.

Templates and Skins

Templates and Skins