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anne.bovard1-Visitor
1-Visitor
February 11, 2011
Question

Whitespace in PDF output

  • February 11, 2011
  • 15 replies
  • 3843 views

Hi all,

I'm having a problem with Styler expressing whitespace in our PDF output. Please see the following code snippet and attached jpg of the output. When I manually remove the spaces between the para and section end tags, I have no problem. It seems that I should be able to strip the space somehow. I admit that the code is a little messy, but is there a way to ignore the whitespace in our output? We're using a FOSI-based Styler stylesheet. Thank you for your time and attention.

Kind regards,

Anne

SPI-turvalausekkeet<title>SPI-turvalausekkeet</title><conbody>
<section> <title>Johdanto</title>

Varoituksilla osoitetaan
tässä oppaassa vaaroja ja vakavuuden tasoa. Tutustu määritelmiin ja
merkityksiin.

Pocket Vieweriä ei ole tarkoitettu ensisijaiseksi
hälytyslähteeksi.

</section>
<section> <title>Vaarat</title>

Vaaratarkoittaa välitöntä
vaarallista tilannetta, jonka huomioimatta jättäminen johtaa vakavaan
loukkaantumiseen tai kuolemaan. Web Viewerissa ei ole äänihälytyksiä.</p<br/>>

</section>
<section> <title>Varoitukset</title>

VAROITUSVaroitus
tarkoittaa tilannetta, jossa saattaa olla vakavan loukkaantumisen
tai kuoleman mahdollisuus. Web Viewerissa ei ole äänihälytyksiä.</p<br/>> </section>
</conbody>
Johdanto


    15 replies

    N
    naglists1-Visitor
    1-Visitor
    February 11, 2011
    can you submit the dtd fragment for section?

    On Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 6:51 AM, Anne Bovard
    <anne.bovard@comtech-serv.com>wrote:

    > Hi all,
    >
    > I'm having a problem with Styler expressing whitespace in our PDF output.
    > Please see the following code snippet and attached jpg of the output. When I
    > manually remove the spaces between the para and section end tags, I have no
    > problem. It seems that I should be able to strip the space somehow. I admit
    > that the code is a little messy, but is there a way to ignore the whitespace
    > in our output? We're using a FOSI-based Styler stylesheet. Thank you for
    > your time and attention.
    >
    > Kind regards,
    >
    > Anne
    >
    > SPI-turvalausekkeet<title>SPI-turvalausekkeet</title><conbody>
    > <section> <title>Johdanto</title>

    Varoituksilla osoitetaan
    > tässä oppaassa vaaroja ja vakavuuden tasoa. Tutustu määritelmiin ja
    > merkityksiin.

    Pocket Vieweriä ei ole tarkoitettu
    > ensisijaiseksi
    > hälytyslähteeksi.

    </section>
    > <section> <title>Vaarat</title>

    Vaaratarkoittaa välitöntä
    > vaarallista tilannetta, jonka huomioimatta jättäminen johtaa vakavaan
    > loukkaantumiseen tai kuolemaan. Web Viewerissa ei ole äänihälytyksiä.</p<br/>> >

    </section>
    > <section> <title>Varoitukset</title>

    VAROITUSVaroitus
    > tarkoittaa tilannetta, jossa saattaa olla vakavan loukkaantumisen
    > tai kuoleman mahdollisuus. Web Viewerissa ei ole äänihälytyksiä.</p<br/>> > </section>
    > </conbody>
    > Johdanto
    >
    >

    A
    anne.bovard1-VisitorAuthor
    1-Visitor
    February 11, 2011

    Hi Paul,

    Here's the snippet:

    Also, two other things to note:

    1) I published in another tool (Oxygen) and the whitespace was ignored.

    2) I published with the OOTB Styler stylesheets and the whitespace was retained.

    Thanks!

    Anne

    P
    ptc-30501501-Visitor
    1-Visitor
    February 11, 2011
    What are the benefits of having Distiller on the Print Engine vs. just using the built-in Compose to PDF?

    John T. Jarrett CDT
    Senior Tech Writer, Integrated Logistics Support, Land & Armaments/Global Tactical Systems
    P
    ptc-9533431-Visitor
    1-Visitor
    February 11, 2011
    I beleive with Distiller you will not get any bookmarks

    > What are the benefits of having Distiller on the Print Engine vs. just
    > using the built-in Compose to PDF?
    >
    > John T. Jarrett CDT
    > Senior Tech Writer, Integrated Logistics Support, Land & Armaments/Global
    > Tactical Systems
    >
    N
    naglists1-Visitor
    1-Visitor
    February 12, 2011
    Within the Arbortext environment, it is not a Styler issue, I think the
    #PCDATA is telling Editor to respect the whitespace. Can't say why other
    parsers/authoring tools do not respect the DTD. Try removing #PCDATA from
    section's content model (be sure it's not being brought back in by way of
    any of your other entities in the content model) just for a test. Not sure
    if it will complain about the whitespace, but it may stop publishing it.

    On Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 8:24 AM, Anne Bovard
    <anne.bovard@comtech-serv.com>wrote:

    > Hi Paul,
    >
    > Here's the snippet:
    > > %title; | %txt.incl; | %data.elements.incl; | %foreign.unknown.incl;">
    >
    > Also, two other things to note:
    >
    > 1) I published in another tool (Oxygen) and the whitespace was ignored.
    >
    > 2) I published with the OOTB Styler stylesheets and the whitespace was
    > retained.
    >
    > Thanks!
    >
    > Anne
    >
    >
    >
    >
    >
    N
    naglists1-Visitor
    1-Visitor
    February 12, 2011
    If bookmarks are still possible, they are not "automatic" or "configuration"
    free. May require explicit stylesheet coding rather than leveraging .dcf and
    maybe pdfcf (I think that's the right extension) div handling. I can't
    remember the subtleties anymore, plus we switched from Print Compose +
    Distiller locally to Compose PDF on PE with PDF Direct so long ago, the
    differences may now be different.

    You will probably get smaller PDFs. (The disparity between PDF Direct and
    Distiller output file size is less than it used to be, but still notable.)

    You will face a different set of font and character landmines. (Whether or
    not you hit them in either instance is determined by how you behaved in a
    previous life).

    Your software account will be several thousand dollars lighter and you will
    have an additional license to manage 😉

    Does anyone know / remember if there is a performance difference? Our docs
    are short enough that performance is rarely an issue. If you're making
    10,000 pages at a go ... you'll want to know the general answer to this
    question and run actual tests with your stylesheets and docs, too, before
    committing.



    E
    ebenton1-Visitor
    1-Visitor
    February 14, 2011
    Generally it's the making of the PostScript file before it gets distilled to PDF that takes most of the time. The distilling itself is relatively quick.

    Years ago, using Print Composer, we noticed that if you did not set your default printer to "Acrobat Distiller" (currently named "Adobe PDF") then the PDF output was suspect, and varied from printer to printer. Apparently the "Acrobat Distiller/Adobe PDF" print driver is a "true" Post Script printer. Not all printers were/are.
    A
    anne.bovard1-VisitorAuthor
    1-Visitor
    February 14, 2011

    Hi Paul,

    Thanks so much for your reply. You've hit upon the same solution that Paul Grosso offered us offline. Paul explained that

    "...any character content--whitespace or not--within a section element is going to be significant. That is, having a space in between the <section> tag and the <title> tag is like having an "x" there, and the composition system will compose that space (just as if it had been a printing character) and you will see an extra line's worth of vertical space. It doesn't matter if you have 1 or 8 spaces, since they will all be on the "same line" of output."

    Revising the DTD would definitely be an interesting exercise for testing, but it cannot be our end-solution. At the end of the day, we have bad XML and we need to figure out the origin of those spaces. Paul G. thought that someone might have pretty-printed the files.

    Thanks again for your attention and help!

    Kind regards,

    Anne


    P
    ptc-30501501-Visitor
    1-Visitor
    February 14, 2011
    Very interesting comments! Thanks very much for the insight. Sounds like that's a potential morass I have zero good reasons to bother with. And the "time" comment brought up a good point: most of the time involved has to do with preparing to send it TO the Print Engine, not with the PDF creation itself, so even if it did cut the time in half, that would only cut maybe half an hour out from 3-4 hours total - still not enough to make it worth messing with.

    John T. Jarrett CDT
    Senior Tech Writer, Integrated Logistics Support, Land & Armaments/Global Tactical Systems
    M
    ManishaPawar1-Visitor
    1-Visitor
    February 15, 2011
    Hi

    I have created a User Inteface in jsp for sending request to Publisher
    Engine. On PE side we have created our own custom datatype and stylesheet
    for composing pdf out of the .xml file which I am sending from User
    Interface.

    on PE side my .xml file getting validate correctly but there is problem
    with composition.(I am sending that file for compositon using http post
    request) I am not getting where things might be failing. One thing I
    obeserved in ACL script is

    If document is valid then following piece of code get executed

    doc is nothing but the xml file I am sending and getting the error which
    is in bold letter.


    {
    local temp_comp_params[];
    local fname =
    epicutil::temporary_directory() . "/myGuide_" . getpid() . "_" . doc .
    ".pdf";
    temp_comp_params[ "outputFile" ] =
    fname;

    if( compose::compose_for_pdf( doc,
    temp_comp_params ) == 1)
    {
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