1. Template Editor Guide for Dynamic Converter
  2. Document Properties

3 Document Properties

This chapter describes document properties.

The following topics are covered in this section:

3.1 About Document Properties

The Add Document Property page allows you to add or remove document properties. There are two types of document properties: predefined and custom.

  • Predefined properties are metadata fields stored in many file formats. An example of this is the Primary author, which is the author of the input document. Exactly which properties are available is highly dependent on the input file format, and in most cases it also depends on whether or not the author provided this information.

  • Custom properties are defined by the author. These can be used to insert arbitrary text and HTML markup into the output files.

The template author can choose predefined properties from the document to be output as metadata or as content in the output. Custom properties can also be created for insertion into the head and/or body of the output file. For each property, the template author can specify a default value to be inserted into the document should a value not be available, either from the document or the runtime API. The meta tag name is the name that identifies the property when placed in a <meta> tag in the head of the document. If the property is to be output in the body of the document, the text can be formatted using the specified output format.

By default, no document properties are defined. In order to include them in the output from the conversion, each desired document property must first be defined here. They must then be added to the output from the conversion by inserting them into page layouts defined in the Output Page Layouts page.

3.2 Defining Document Properties

The following steps allow you to define document properties:

  1. In the Add Document Property page, click Add. The Document Property page is displayed.
  2. The first field offers the option between Predefined and Custom.

    • In the Predefined drop-down box, select from a list of metadata fields stored in many file formats.

    • In the Custom text box, you may include properties not listed in the Predefined drop-down. To do this, click on the Custom button and type in either the property name as it appears in the source document, or a new property name that you will create. Property names are case-sensitive.

  3. In the Default value text box, enter the default value to use if the property is not found in the input document being converted. This is also used as the value for custom properties. Providing a default value is optional.
  4. In the Meta tag name text box, if the property is to appear in an HTML meta tag, then this is the value of the "name" attribute to use in the meta tag. The value of the "content" attribute will be taken from the source document or the Default value option set above, as appropriate.

    If there is no author specified in the input document then the meta tag generated will be:

    <meta name="author" content="Unknown">

    While providing a meta tag name is optional, it must be specified if the property is to be included with the rest of the meta tags in the <head> of the output files. Properties that have a meta tag name defined are automatically added to the <head>; the user cannot add properties via the Head layout section.

  5. In the Output format drop-down box, select the name of the previously defined output paragraph format. This will be used to format the property when including the property's value in the output as visible text. Output paragraph formats are defined in Output Pages > Output Text Formats.