Section Menu Feedback Panel

page 174 The XML document identifies one panel as the Feedback panel. The Feedback button on the navigation bar of every HTML file points to the HTML file with the feedback form. Again, all of these cross-references are generated automatically through the magic of XSLT and XPath.

9.3.5 Email Panel

Another feature of our tutorials is that you can email the URL of the tutorial to a friend. Clicking the e-mail it icon on any panel displays a new browser window as shown in Figure 9-7 . Figure 9-7. The email panel In this example, the text beneath the title of the tutorial is derived from the abstract attribute of the tutorial element.

9.3.6 Zip File

To help readers who have either occasional or expensive web access, we build a zip file that contains everything they need to use the tutorial on their machines. The contents include all generated HTML files, all of the standard graphics used in the header and footer, and any referenced graphics from the tutorial itself.

9.3.7 PDF Files

For readers who want to print out the tutorial and read it offline, we produce two PDF versions of the tutorial, one for letter-sized paper, and one for A4-sized paper. Although we could provide an HTML file that simply contains the HTML rendering of all the pages of the tutorial, we want higher-quality printable output. The first page of the tutorial, shown in Figure 9-8 , features the title of the tutorial and a table of contents. In the table of contents, both the section titles and the page numbers are hyperlinks. If you view the PDF file online, you can click on those items and go directly to the various parts of the tutorial. Even if you read a printout of the PDF file, the page numbers are still an important navigational tool. Cross-references between panels in the tutorial are similarly converted to hyperlinks and printable page numbers. Best of all, any hyperlinks to web sites page 175 are also converted to hyperlinks. If your machine is connected, and you have a recent version of the Adobe Acrobat Reader, you can click on the web site and go directly to it. Figure 9-8. First page of the tutorial PDF file Pages in the body of the tutorial feature the text and illustrations of each panel, with a horizontal line between panels. The first panel of each section starts on a new page. Figure 9- 9 shows the layout of an individual panel in the PDF file. Figure 9-9. PDF layout for an individual panel To accommodate our worldwide audience, we create letter-sized and A4-sized versions of the PDF file. We use the same stylesheet for each PDF file; we simply change the page dimensions and let the Formatting Objects to PDF FOP tool generate the line, column, and page breaks for us. We are responsible for creating the formatting objects the FOP tool needs to do its work.