Review this information to learn more about generating
HTML documents with Rational® Publishing Engine.
Purpose
To output the template
as an HTML web page.
Template elements
Table 1. Template elements
available to use for the HTML output formatElement |
Description |
Can contain other elements |
Can contain data |
Paragraph |
Use to group a section of elements.
Adds a carriage return around its child elements in the output. |
Yes |
No |
Container |
Use to group a section of elements.
Cannot be styled and does not affect the formatting of the output.When
used inside other elements, the child elements available to use within
the container might be limited. For example: - Inside rows, containers can host cells only
- Inside lists, containers can host list-detail elements only
|
Yes |
No |
Text |
The content renders with the same,
specified formatting. |
No |
Yes |
Styled text |
A block of text that can have unique
formatting on individual words. Use bold, italic, underline, strikeout,
or color formatting on a selection of words within the element. The
text is static. |
No |
Yes |
Hyperlink |
Creates a hyperlink in the output.
The hyperlink can point to a location inside the document or to an
external location. |
No |
Yes |
Image |
Displays a .gif, .png, .jpg, emf,
or wmf image in the output. The report designer
can specify the image path in the template or the report generator
can specify the path at run time. |
No |
Yes |
Table |
Creates a table in the output. A table
can contain rows or container elements. |
Yes |
No |
Row |
Creates a row in the current table. |
Yes |
No |
Cell |
Creates a cell in the current row of
the current table. |
Yes |
No |
List |
Creates a bulleted or numeric list
in the output. |
Yes |
No |
List detail |
Creates a list item in the current
list in the output. |
Yes |
No |
Data source configuration |
See Adding a data source configuration element. |
No |
No |
Include file |
Includes the specified file in the
output as an INCLUDETEXT field. - Included file can have a .doc, .docx, .txt,
or .rtf extension.
- For Microsoft Word
output, you must update all fields with the macro to see the included
file.
- For Legacy PDF, HTML, and XSL-FO output, the included file is
a hyperlink to the document.
|
No |
Yes |
Bookmark |
Defines a bookmark in the document.
The name of the generated bookmark is the content for the bookmark.
When generating the documents, Rational Publishing Engine generates
a unique name for each bookmark. The name is based on the name provided
at design time and a unique identifier generated at run time. |
No |
Yes |
Page Break |
Adds a page break to the output. |
No |
No |
Section Break |
Adds a section break to the output. |
No |
No |
Table of Contents |
Adds a table of contents to the output. |
No |
No |
Element properties
Review these
notes to understand more about specifying the element properties in
templates that are designed to generate HTML documents.
Table 2. Cell
propertiesCell properties |
Notes® |
Border width |
You must specify a value for the border width
to create a border in the output. |
Cell alignment |
This property specifies the position of the text within the
cell. |
Cell width |
You can specify cell widths in pixels, points,
or percents. |
Table 3. Figure caption propertiesFigure caption properties |
Notes |
Border width |
You must specify a value for the border width
to create a border in the output. |
Field code |
Do not use for this output format. |
Table 4. Image propertiesImage properties |
Notes |
Border width |
You must specify a value for the border width
to create a border in the output. |
Content |
Supported image formats: - Internet Explorer: .bmp, .emf, .gif, .jpg, .png, .svg (version
9 and later), .wmf
- Firefox: .bmp, .gif, .jpg, .png, .svg
|
Table 5. List-detail propertiesList-detail properties |
Notes |
Border width |
You must specify a value for the border width
to create a border in the output. |
Table 6. Page number propertiesPage number properties |
Notes |
Border width |
You must specify a value for the border width
to create a border in the output. |
Table 7. Paragraph propertiesParagraph properties |
Notes |
Border width |
You must specify a value for the border width
to create a border in the output. |
Paragraph alignment |
Space the text across the page with a
certain alignment. Left, right,
and center alignment, creates uneven paragraph
edges, fitting as many words in a paragraph as possible. Justify creates
even paragraph edges by inserting additional space between words on
all lines except the last line. Distributed is
similar to justify, except that space is also
inserted between words in the last line of the paragraph.
|
Widow/orphan control |
Do not use for this output format. |
Table 8. Row propertiesRow properties |
Notes |
Row break across pages |
Do not use for this output format. |
Table 9. Table propertiesTable properties |
Notes |
Autofit to contents |
Resizes the table to fit the content each cell
contains. When you use this property, also set the Resize
to fit contents property to true. |
Border width |
You must specify a value for the border width
to create a border in the output. |
Cell spacing |
Do not use for this output format. |
Fixed cell width in column |
Specify a value in pixels to ensure that all
of the cells in a column are the same width. |
Resize to fit contents |
When set to true, lines
do not break unless a space is present. When you do not have space,
lines do not break and the column width is increased to the width
of the text. If autofit to contents is set,
you must set resize to fit contents to true. When
set to false, the column width is fixed and
the lines break regardless of the spaces used or the length of the
text. Also, the table auto fit property is
ignored.
|
Table auto fit |
When set to true, the table is resized to fit
the width of the page. When resize to fit contents is
also set to true, cell widths are ignored and the table is resized
to match the content. You cannot enter fixed column
width as a value. Use the fixed cell width property
instead.
|
Table 10. Table caption propertiesTable caption properties |
Notes |
Border width |
You must specify a value for the border width
to create a border in the output. |
Field code |
Do not use for this output format. |
Table 11. Text propertiesText properties |
Notes |
Border width |
You must specify a value for the border width
to create a border in the output. |
Table 12. Total pages number propertiesTotal pages number properties |
Notes |
Border width |
You must specify a value for the border width
to create a border in the output. |
Include file element
You can choose to link the file or
physically embed the file into your output document. However, the
way that include file elements are handled depends on the output format
and the location from which you are retrieving the file. For Legacy PDF, HTML, and XSL-FO outputs, the
included file is always a hyperlink.
Heading styles
To use the
predefined heading styles for HTML (H1, H2, ... , 9), use the style
name 1, 2, to 9.
Rational Publishing Engine styles
versus external styles
Use external styles, which are defined
in a style sheet, as much as possible. This approach allows you to
quickly change the appearance of the output document and enforces
a uniform look across the company.
Unicode data in output
All Unicode data is rendered if the font that is
used supports Unicode. For
HTML output, if you used a non-Unicode font, change the font family
in the style sheet after document generation.
OLE objects
You can extract embedded objects,
such as Object linking and embedding (OLE objects), from attributes
in a data source. OLE objects are always rendered as images in HTML
output though, because the format does not support OLE objects.
Lists in paragraphs
When you are
designing templates that are to be used to generate HTML output, avoid
nesting list elements in paragraph elements.
Lists inherit a designated
set of formatting properties that interfere with certain paragraph
properties. For example, paragraph properties like background color
and borders are affected when the paragraph contains a list. Place
list elements after paragraph elements in your template to avoid these
issues.