Design a page layout

Design a page layout

When creating a PDF document, you would have different sections for presenting different types of information. For example, a PDF document would start from a front or cover page, which would have your company’s logo, book title, or version information. Then there would be chapters, appendices, or glossary pages. Each section in a PDF document looks different and that is achieved by creating and customizing the page layout.

When you design your page layout, you can define the various elements that make up a page. For example, you can define the page size, margins, header and footer, orientation, and other page specifications on a page. The PDF Publishing feature allows you to design your page as per the Page Media standards. Most of the settings that are covered under the Paged Media standards can be easily customized using the PDF Publishing feature’s user interface. For some other advanced-level formatting, you can use the Source view to write your own CSS code.

Once you have designed the page layouts, you need to associate these layouts with their respective sections in the PDF Page Layout settings.

See the Create and customize page layouts section for details on how to create and open a page layout for customization.

Types of page layouts

A PDF document typically contains the following sections:

• Cover page
• Table of contents
• Lift of figures
• Lift of tables
• Chapter or topic pages
• Glossary
• Index
• Back page

These sections would need a corresponding page layout to present the information in a specific format. In addition, you can also have a blank page that is used as a filler to start a new chapter from an odd or even page. In that case, you can either use the default page layout or create a page layout for a blank page.

The Page Layouts settings under the Template>Settings section allow you to define which page layout is to be used for different sections of your PDF. Each page layout can further have different first, right, or left page variants.

Create the first, right, or left page layout variants

Different page layouts in your PDF template can be further customized by having different first, right, or left page layout variants. You can design these pages differently using the page layout designer.

Consider the following points when creating the page layouts:

• If you want to use a single page layout for all pages within a chapter, then you would create only a single chapter page layout without any variant.
• If you want to have a different look and feel for the first page for chapters in your book, then you need to create a First page layout variant for your chapters.
• If you want to have a different look and feel for every left and right side page of your book, then you need to create the Left and Right side variants for your chapter page layout.
• If you want your chapters to start from an odd or even page, then can choose to create a page layout for the blank page. This page layout is used to fill the gap between two chapters to ensure the chapter starts from the desired odd or even page.

The following example will walk you through the process of creating variants of a page layout:

The selected page layout is created using a copy of the base Chapter layout. This means that if you have made any changes in the default Chapter page layout, the same changes are replicated in the variant page layout at the time of page layout creation.

Work with the Page Properties of a page layout

While designing a page layout, having control over various page properties is essential. The PDF Publishing feature encapsulates all major page properties under the Page Properties panel. The Page Properties panel provides access to various properties under the following sections:

• Page Size : Specify the page size you want to use for the page layout. The Page Size dropdown list allows you to choose from over 15 page sizes. You can also create a page layout using a custom page size, see Set the page size for more details.
• Orientation : Specify the page orientation to use for the page layout. You can choose from Portrait or Landscape page orientations. Note that you can choose to have different orientations applied to different page variants in a page layout. For example, if your content contains a wide table or a large image, then you can create a landscape page layout and apply that layout to the wider table or image.
• View Rotation : Specify the side or direction in which the original top side is represented after rotation. You can choose from Clockwise 90, Anticlockwise 90, or Anticlockwise 180 degrees. This is very useful in a situation wherein you want to use a combination of Portrait and Landscape layouts in your output. For example, you can use portrait as the generic page layout, and you can set a landscape page layout for rendering wide tables. In that situation, you can set to display the table content in Clockwise 90 degrees. That way the page will be oriented in landscape and the content will be rotated 90 degrees to maintain continuity in view. We will see how this is achieved as an example later in this section.
• Page Numbering Restart from : Specify the page number from where the numbering for this page layout will start. For example, you can set the page number to restart for every chapter. In that case, you need to set the Restart Numbering from property to 1 on the First page layout variant of the chapter page layout.
  Apply to the first occurence only: If selected, this option enables you to reset the page number specifically for only the first occurence of any Page Layout, with the following pages being numbered automatically thereafter. For example, if you set the Page Numbering Restart from to 2 and select the option Apply to the first occurence only, then only the first page of the first chapter will begin from page number 2. Subsequent pages will then continue numbering automatically after 2.
  

• Layout : Specify page margins along with padding for top, bottom, left, and right sides. The following illustration explains how margins, padding, and borders are rendered around the content. Note that the margin at the top and bottom of a page contain the header and footer.
• Background : Include an image or a color as the background of your page layout. For an image, you can specify the height and width of the image along with repetition and position properties.
• Footnote : Specify the properties to display footnotes in your output. You can choose to specify the margins and padding properties along with a border style.

Set the page size

The very first thing that you need to define in a page layout is the page size. In the Page Properties, there are over 15-page sizes that you can choose for a page layout. You can also create a custom page size by performing the following steps:

Use page orientation and view rotation

Let’s look at an example wherein a combination of portrait and landscape page orientation and view rotation properties are used. In this example, we will create a PDF with default portrait orientation, but a table will be rendered in landscape orientation with content in Clockwise 90 degree view. The final output will look something similar to:

In the above output, the Contact List information is presented in landscape mode with content also rotated in 90 degrees. The remaining content is displayed in the normal portrait mode.

To achieve this kind of output, we need to perform the following main tasks:

Perform the following steps to achieve the above tasks:

Add a background image

Based on your requirements, you might want to add a background image that appears on every first page of a Chapter (PDF) output. The Background properties under the Page Properties allow you to easily add a background image. You can choose to replicate this image across a page, and position the image anywhere in the top, bottom, or center area of the page.

For example, to insert a background image in the center part of your content area, then perform the following steps:

Work with page header and footer

When you include information in a header or footer in a page layout that information is repeated on all pages using that page layout. Typically, the header area is used for chapter or topic title and the footer area is used for showing page numbers.

When you create a new page layout the header and footer area is created by default. You can do many customizations in the header and footer area of a page layout. For example, you can insert an image (like a logo), variables (containing dynamic information), or static content.

Change the header and footer margins and lines

By default, the header and footer margins are set to 1 inch. You can change this default value by changing the Margin setting in the Page Properties panel. Perform the following steps to change the header and footer size:

Remove the header and footer

The header and footer overlay in the top and bottom margins. Technically, this means that if you want to have a header and footer in your page layout, you must reserve the required space in the top and bottom margins.

If you do not want a page layout to have a header and footer, then there are two ways to achieve this:

• If you want to retain the top and bottom margins, leave the header and footer area blank.
• If you do not want to retain the top and bottom margins (like designing the front and back cover of a magazine), then you can remove the margins by setting the top and bottom margin properties to 0. This leaves no space for the header and footer.

Add an image or a logo in the header

Based on your requirements, you might want to add an image that appears in the header area (or any other part) of the page layout. There are two ways in which you can add an image in your page layout:

• Use an image from the template Resources.
• Use the <Add Image> tool in the page layout editor.

To insert an image like your company’s logo in the header area, perform the following steps:

Once an image is inserted, you can modify its attributes to give it the look and feel that you want. The easiest way of changing the way an image or any other element on your page layout looks, use the Content Properties panel.

Add fields and metadata

Fields are very useful when you want to insert a piece of information that is pre-defined. For example, you can include a Chapter Title field in your chapter’s header area that is replaced with the actual chapter’s title when published.

There are the following categories for fields that you can insert in your page layout:

• Date
• Time
• Topic Title
• Project Title
• Page Number
• Total Page
• Chapter Title
• Chapter Number
• Metadata

Each of these field categories contain different variations in which the field information can be inserted. For example, a Date field can have different variations such as YYYY-MM-DD, MM/DD/YY, MM/DD/YYYY and so on. Similarly, Page Number can have variations in the form of roman, decimal, or even locale-specific formats such as Arabic, Devanagari, Hebrew, and more.

In addition to the predefined fields, you can also add metadata information as variables or fields in your page layout. This metadata is stored in your source TOC content, and it can be easily inserted in your page layout.

In the following example, we will insert a page number and a chapter title in the footer area of a page layout.

Work with content area

The content area is the largest area in terms of content space. The content area is populated with your topic’s content. In some special cases, you can add boilerplate content in the content area. This content is published at the specified location in your page layout. For example, the heading in your table of contents, glossary, and index can be added as boilerplate content, which is published “as is” in the final output. Another example is the chapter TOC, which is typically added on the first page of every chapter.

One of the most commonly used customizations in the content area is the multi-column layout. With the powerful page layout designer, you can customize specific pages to render in multiple columns, while keeping the content in other pages in a single column.

In the following sections, we will cover various scenarios to customize the content area.

Add a chapter TOC

A chapter table of contents serves as a quick reference for the readers to know what is in the chapter. Typically, a chapter TOC is added at the very beginning of a chapter. So, if you want to use a chapter TOC, then you can add it in the content area of the main chapter page layout or the first page layout variant of a chapter.

In the following example, we will insert a chapter TOC in the first page layout of a chapter:

The look and feel of the default TOC can be customized using the stylesheets. The style starting with chaptoc-level-# (like chaptoc-level-1, chaptoc-level-2, and so on) are used to customize the styles for the chapter TOC.

Work with multi-column page layout

Multi-column page layouts are very common in publishing magazines or indexes in a book. The PDF Publishing feature allows you to easily split your document into multiple columns. Using different page layouts, you can choose to keep only a specific section divided into multiple columns while keeping the other sections in a single column (or normal) layout.

To create a page layout with multiple columns, perform the following steps:

Work with Content Properties panel

The Content Properties panel lets you easily update the look and feel of the elements on your page layout. The properties under the Content Properties panel are divided into the following sections:

• Font : Contains text-related properties. You can set Font Family, Weight, Size, Text Decoration (as underline, overline, line-through), Text Style (as Bold, Italics, and more), Text Alignment (as left, right, center, or justified), handle White Spaces (as predefine format, no-wrap, break-space, and more), Line Height, Letter Spacing, and Text Indent.
• Border : Contains properties to add and format a border to an element in your page layout. You can set Border Side (as all, top, bottom, right, or left), Border Style (as Solid, Dashed, Dotted lines, or more), Border Color, Width, and Radius for having a curved border. In the following example, a curved border has been added in the header area of the page.
• Layout : Contains properties to configure the layout of an element in your page layout. You can set Height, Width, Margins and Padding (for top, bottom, left, or right), Horizontal or Vertical alignment, Float (as Left, Right, or none), Clear (as left, right, both, or none), element’s Position (as absolute, fixed, relative, or more), Display (as block, content, fix or more), Z Index, Transparency, Transform (by rotating or scaling), and Transform Origin (by X and Y-offset).
• Background : Contains properties to include a background image or color shade. You can set the Image Size (by setting Height or Width), Background Repeat (as repeat, no-repeat, round, or more), and Background Position (as left top, right center, center bottom, or more).
• Columns : Contains properties to configure multi-column properties for the page or any specific element, such as Chapter TOC.