The Print Manual Designer

The Print Manual Designer is a separate program used for editing the print manual template files that define the layout and appearance of your published PDF files and printed manuals.

In addition to defining the layout of your PDF pages you can also add additional pages and content not included in your project, including cover and back cover pages, an introduction, a formatted table of contents, title pages for individual chapters, headers and footers, a formatted index and multiple endnotes pages. You can also add your own custom pages and insert topics from your project and external Help & Manual XML files.

The Print Manual Designer has its own help so this topic only describes the basic procedures for opening templates for editing and selecting them in your projects. Print manual template files have the extension .mnl.

You can open the print manual template assigned to the current project directly for editing.

Opening the template for Adobe PDF output:

1.	Open your project and go to Configuration > Publishing Options > Adobe PDF > PDF Layout.

2.	Click on the Design... button to the right of the Print Manual Template: field. This opens the Print Manual Designer and loads the current template for editing.

Opening the template for printed manuals:

1.	Open your project, click on the Application Button and select Print Manual.

2.	Click on the Design... button to the right of the Print Manual Template: field. This opens the Print Manual Designer and loads the current template.

Note that you can set different templates for PDF and print manual output. Both settings are stored automatically after being selected.

You must select a print manual template in your Project Configuration settings to use it for your project. You can select separate templates for printed manuals and Adobe PDF output.

Selecting a template for Adobe PDF output:

1.	Open your project and go to Configuration > Publishing Options > Adobe PDF > PDF Layout.

2.	Enter the path and name of the template you want to use in the Print Manual Template: field. Use the browse button to locate and select the template you want to use.

Selecting a template for printed manuals:

1.	Open your project, click on the Application Button and select Print Manual.

2.	Enter the path and name of the template you want to use in the Print Manual Template: field. Use the browse button to locate and select the template you want to use.

•	Select the Manual Designer tool in Project > Tools.

This opens the Print Manual Designer with a new empty template file. It is generally easier to edit an existing template, particularly when you are using the program for the first time. You can find a collection of sample templates in the \Templates\pdf folder in the Help & Manual program directory, which is normally C:\Program Files\EC Software\HelpAndManual5.

It is a good idea to make a copy of the sample template instead of working on the original. If you are using Windows Vista you will generally be unable to save template files in the template directory – you must save a copy in a directory for which your user account has full read and write permissions.

It is a good idea to store the working copy of your print manual template in your project directory if you want to keep all the files used by your project in one place.