Developing MiramoPDF templates

What is MiramoPDF?

MiramoPDF provides direct end-user control over PDF designs and typography in DITA and other automated publishing environments. The MiramoDesigner graphical user interface enables changing page layouts and other features without the need for specialized coding or delay.

Using MiramoPDF, users can change their corporate designs and branding in a day
or less instead of the weeks or even months required when using CSS or XSL-FO applications.

MiramoPDF consists of the following components:

Miramo Designer, the graphic environment in which you design PDF templates for DITA and XML files
Miramo Composer, the “composition engine” that converts XML files to PDF
The Miramo DITA-OT plugin, with which you publish to PDF via the DITA-OT

Diagram of MiramoPDF workflow: DITA Open Toolkit with Miramo plugin, Composer, and Designer converting structured content into PDF.

Learning objectives of the course

After completing this training, you will be able to:

Explain the relationship between DITA elements and formatting definitions in a MiramoPDF template
Use Miramo Designer to create a new template
Define page layout, paragraph styles, table formatting, and headers and footers for common DITA elements
Generate a PDF from DITA source files and resolve formatting issues
Align a template with a corporate identity and make it transferable to colleagues

Required prior knowledge

The course participants must:

Be able to work smoothly in a Microsoft Windows or MacOS environment
Have knowledge of DITA and XML
Know the basic principles of graphic design

Required software

In this course, we use (a trial version of):

Duration

Designing a Miramo PDF template in Miramo Designer: 2 days
Creating a MiramoPDF plugin for the DITA Open Toolkit: 0.5 days

Target audience

People who want to design PDF templates for content structured in DITA (or other XML).
These could be, for example, graphic designers, information architects, or technical writers with a good knowledge of template design.

Topics

The following topics are covered in the course:

Specify general page layout (DocDef), page size, and pagination (single-sided or double-sided document)
Define colors (ColorDef)
Create master pages (PageDef) for the different types of pages in your document: first page, left or right pages, cover page, pages in the table of contents, ...
Set paragraph and page numbering
Create headers and footers (RunningTextDef)
Design paragraph (ParaDef) and character styles (FontDef)
Define user variables (VarDefs) for DITA metadata and language-specific generated labels ("Note", "Caution", "Warning", "Result", etc.)
Create cross-reference definitions (XRefDef)
Define table styles (TableDef and RuleDef)
Set default resolution (dpi) for images
Create generated lists, such as the table of contents or a list of figures and tables
Understand all parameters from the DITA Open Toolkit plug-in that affect the formatting in the PDF

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