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Creating Topic Styles for Print Output

A style sheet allows you to single-source formatting by setting the properties in one place and reusing them throughout your project. But what if you want your online output to look one way and your printed output to look another way? Rather than creating a style for online output and another style for printed output, you can use a single style and provide it with two sets of properties—one set to use for online output and another set to use with printed output. You can accomplish this through the use of a medium in your style sheet.

For more information, see About Styles and Style Sheets and About Style Sheet Mediums.

How to create topic styles for printed output

1. Open the style sheet that you want to modify.
2. Set the style properties to be used for your online output:
   1. In the local toolbar of the Stylesheet Editor, do one of the following:

      • In the Medium field, make sure Medium: (default) is selected.

        OR

      • Click the down arrow in the Medium field and select Medium: non-print.
   2. Select a style and set the properties for it. Do this for each style that you want to use in your online output. See Editing Styles.
3. Set the style properties to be used for your printed output:

   1. In the local toolbar of the Stylesheet Editor, click the down arrow in the Medium field and select Medium: print or Medium: [name of print medium].

      Note: You can also create a new medium if necessary. You actually might find it preferable to do this. For example, if you want page breaks before a particular heading for print output, but not when users send online topics to the printer, it is a good idea to create a custom print medium. The reason for this is that browsers respect the settings in the "print" medium provided by Flare. Therefore, even though your online output style medium does not have page breaks set before that heading, the application will see that you DO have a page break specified in the print medium. And when a user tries to print a topic from your online Help, the printer will start a new page at that heading. The solution is to create a custom print medium (perhaps calling it "PDF" or "XPS"), specifying page breaks in that medium, and using it for your print output (instead of using the "print" medium provided by Flare). See Creating Style Sheet Mediums.

   2. Select the same styles that you edited for the online output, and set different properties for them (for the purpose of printed output).
   3. Press CTRL+S or click to save your work.

4. Apply the styles to the content throughout your project.

   See Applying Styles to Topic Content.

5. Associate the online medium with your online target:

   1. Open the target to be used for online output (based on either the DotNet Help, HTML Help, WebHelp, WebHelp Plus, or WebHelp AIR format).

      See Opening Targets.

   2. In the Target Editor, select the Advanced tab.
   3. In the Stylesheet Medium section, select the medium that you used for online output (e.g., default, non-print).
6. Associate the print medium with your print target:

   1. Open the target to be used for printed output (based on either the Adobe PDF, XHTML, Microsoft XPS, Microsoft Word, or Adobe FrameMaker format).

   2. In the Target Editor, select the Advanced tab.
   3. In the Stylesheet Medium section, select the medium that you used for printed output (e.g., print).
7. Press CTRL+SHIFT+S or click to save your work.

Note: You can also create special print versions of styles for tables. See Creating Table Styles for Print Output.

See Also

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