1 Font embedding in HTML page output

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1 Tetrasoft Brussels, January 19 th , Sleeckx Avenue B-1030 Brussels Tel: Dear Leaflet user, Leaflet is the current version of Leaflet XI. Next to numerous miscellaneous improvements this last version contains the following noteworthy features: - Leaflet exports to Indesign CC, Indesign CC 2014 and Indesign CC The (Windows) Indesign plug-in is compatible with Indesign CC The Leaflet XII we announced last year is still in the works. Leaflet XII implements 3 important functionalities announced earlier: 1 Cell spanning in 2D tables and 2 The smart viewer for HTML5 pages on tablets and computer screens. 3 The internal script processor These key features of Leaflet XII are already finished and have been used on pilot projects. Leaflet XII will be released in early Other features announced previously will be available with Leaflet XII.1 later on. Here follows - Next to some spanning samples - the list of other new features also present in Leaflet XII : 1 Font embedding in HTML page output HTML assumes that the fonts used in a page are available on the terminal. If it s not the case, a substitution occurs between the missing font and other fonts that might be available. On systems with very few fonts, it might occur that the whole page is displayed in the default operating system font. Next to the aesthetic problem of displaying other fonts than the ones of the original design, there is the problem of the metrics. Different fonts have diverging metrics and designs that don t have enough slack in order to take care of this will soon show disappointing results with text overflowing from narrow cells and so on. What was good looking in PDF becomes a mess in HTML partly because of the fonts. Therefore it is possible to load the font (and/or a web coding of it) on the HTML pages server. This font will be automatically downloaded by the browser when the font is missing on the client. Leaflet supports the TTF and WOFF standards. Those are supported by all major (recent) browsers as can be seen in the table below. 1

2 2 Cell spanning in 2D tables Spanning works automatically. All is needed is to define a field that drives the spanning. The field can be a physical field (for example the one containing the data to display), but it can also be a calculated field. Here below some real world samples where borders and alternate colors have been combined in order to show how (well) they behave when spanning Vertical and horizontal spanning can be applied in sequence. In a 2D table row height and column width can be automatically resized taking cell data into account. This works also when spanning is active. When used properly, spanning not only enhances the readability of a table, it can also save a lot of space! And Leaflet does it all automatically at computer speed. 2

3 3 Internal script processor also supported in batch The internal script processor runs macros using the same instructions as the batch. All commands but Open Close and Save are supported. Next to that, in batch there is a new function called Runmacro that executes a script contained in an external file. Calling external files can help avoid having to recompile the application calling Leaflet when the API calls change. Editing the external script is in many cases sufficient and painless. 4 Freezing of top lines in tables Sometimes table titles are in the same data structures as the underlying data cells. With row freezing (like in Excel ) it becomes easy to handle such cases. Freezing is just defined as one of the advanced features of the container of the table. Freezing of top rows as defined in the advanced extended properties of a 2D DBC This property is compatible with splitting, spanning and alternate colors. The number of rows to freeze can be determined by a calculated field, so it can dynamically vary in function of the contents of the database and is not fixed by the template design. 5 Database Container styles as big as a 2 page spread It has become possible to draw dynamic templates that can stretch over a spread (2 facing pages) of a document. Previously a template could spill far from the border of a single page (ie for drawing on lost borders), but never on another page even if it was on the same spread. In order to circumvent this, it was needed to define another document with pages as big as the spread of the original document (ie one landscape A3 for an A4 portrait document) and draw and play the wide templates in this separate document and later reassemble everything into one single PDF. This was cumbersome and source of headaches for page numbering and TOC handling. With this new feature everything can be done in the same document and a template starting on a left page can spill over to the right page of the same spread. Splitting is supported. 3

4 6 Drag & drop between a browser and Leaflet XML structures containing relevant data about template and key values can be drag & dropped from a browser to a page of a Leaflet document. This way a Leaflet document can be filled manually following a flatplan built in a browser. 1 With this kind of drag & drop allows to easily integrate Leaflet with any system (like a PIM or even your own custom development) that is used for generating a flatplan of the document to be layout in Leaflet. Until now it was easy to generate a document automatically by playing the list of keys as selected in the Key database. Now it will also be possible to drag and drop templates and their keys one by one from the PIM system or any browser page to Leaflet. This has been tested with Internet explorer, Firefox and Chrome. 7 Drag & drop between the Windows file explorer and Leaflet Images can be drag & dropped from the explorer right onto a Leaflet page just like in Indesign. 4

5 8 Draw tables with HTML table code Until now tables had to be draw with Database Container structures (1D or 2D) and data coming from structured database fields. And this is still by far the best way to go. Sometimes there are tables included in HTML text and it is not possible or wished to input those data into the database the more conventional way. Now Leaflet is able to process those tables with control on the layout of the table through extensive use of HTML attributes. This kind of code (in yellow the tags having an influence on the layout): <HTML> <table bordercolor="white" cellspacing="100µm" cellpadding="5" align="center" width="160mm"> <thead> <tr bgcolor = "cyan" align="center"> <th scope="col"><font color="white">dn</font></th>... </tr> <tr bgcolor = "cyan" bordercolor="white"><th colspan="5"><font color="white">[mm]</font></th><th><font color="white">(kg)</font></th></tr> </thead> <tbody bordercolor="black"> <tr bgcolor="light gray" bordercolor="light gray"><td>50</td><td>165</td><td>175</td><td>108</td><td>232</td><td>11</td><td>70</td></tr> <tr><td>65</td><td>185</td><td>183</td><td>112</td><td>232</td><td>13</td><td>220</td></tr>... </tbody> </table> Gives this kind of result: For now Leaflet doesn t support (inline) CSS, but it is always possible to parse existing html text and replace inline CSS by corresponding html attributes. 5

6 9 Query SubSection, Page, DBC attributes within calculated fields One of the strengths of Leaflet is its documentation (available on FTP). Next to the User manual, there is also the calculated fields reference manual and the batch reference manual, not to forget the Leaflet status document. Regularly new functions are added to the calculated fields and the batch. With Leaflet XII a new series of functions have been added that open a wide range of possibilities concerning the structure of the document: 1. The SubSection object: gives information about the SubSection data like : - Page numbering scheme : Continue or reset page numbering - First page number - Number of pages in the SubSection - Physical SubSection number - Logical SubSection number 2. The Page object: allows to query all information concerning document pages like: - The page style - The list of DBC on the page - the ID of the page - the physical and logical pagenumbers - the size of the page - the name - the margins - the DC area (the area that may be filled by DBCs) - the left/right condition of the page 3. The DBC object: allows to query a lot of information concerning the DBCs to be found in the document. As example : - the DBC style that is applied to a DBC - its coordinates - its ID - its position in the sequence of DBC of the document - its name - its chain situation - the page it is on - etc With these objects all SubSection, Page and DBC data can be queried through their respective collections and links (A DBC belongs to a Page and a Page belongs to a SubSection) Querying these data in calculated fields allow to push conditional publishing even further, because it now also can depend on the structure of the document at the time of evaluation. Here are a few examples: - Show footnotes only when a specific template is present on the page or in the same SubSection. - Use different parameter values in function of the running template. - Query data changes (like classification) between 2 adjacent DBC styles more accurately than before. - Leaflet, what else? Tetrasoft wishes you a happy new year! Emmanuel van Hecke Tetrasoft 6