Adding templates to a document specification

You can call for one or multiple templates in a document specification and generate a document from the document specification.

Before you begin

To create multi-template documents, create reusable document templates for specific purposes and add multiple document templates to a document specification.

Procedure

  1. In the RPE Launcher, click File > New document specification.
  2. Optional: Enter the metadata for the document specification:
    • Name: A name for the document specification. This name is only in the metadata and not a name for the file to be saved as.
    • Description: An explanation of the content in the document specification or context for other users to work with the document specification.
  3. Click Finish.
  4. Right-click Templates.
  5. Click Add templates.
  6. Select a template in the Central Management component, from your local computer, or a remote server and click OK.
    Tip: You can use relative paths, HTTP paths , or HTTPS paths to related resources in document specifications. When you use relative paths, you can change the directory structure of your files or move them to the central asset management system and still access the files necessary to generate documents. You are prompted to choose between using relative paths or absolute paths when the document specification is saved, when the template is in the same folder as the document specification, when the template is in a child folder of the folder that contains the document specification, or when the template is in a parent folder of the folder that contains the document specification. You cannot specify a relative path to a parent folder of a parent folder.
  7. Repeat to add additional templates to the document specification.
    Note: You can use the same template multiple times with different configurations for its data sources.

Results

When you publish the document, each template is executed in the order it are specified in the document specification.

Example

Table 1. Rational Tau multi-template document example
Template file name Template contents Explanation of use
titlePage.dta Title page, Table of contents Generates the title page from the Module properties
Preamble.dta Preamble chapters Includes a Microsoft Word file with preamble chapters
Requirements.dta System requirements Generates the data from the data source listing the system requirements
userRequirements.dta User requirements Generates the data from the data source listing the user requirements
Design.dta Modeling information Generates the data from the data source listing information from the UML model

Feedback