Input: This is the dialogue shown in the screenshot in Figure 2. Here you specify the files that will go into your target document when you generate it. Note the buttons on the right: you may add an HTML file, or you may specify a network URL. That's right, you can make PDF files out of on-line content. Be careful about those pesky Copyrights!

We'll use the file-based content. Here's what you see when you click the Add Files... button:

This is a fairly standard file browse-and-select screen. We have selected the HTMLDOC.html file.

After we selected all we were going to select for the example, our Input tab looked like Figure 4.

Figure 4. The Input Tab

We have told HTMLDOC that we want to generate a book, and we have told it which files we are going to use to do it. Let's move on to the next tab.

Output: Here we specify the output we are going to produce, in this case a PDF file. We could have specified PostScript here, but we are only covering PDFs. You can explore the other aspects on your own.

Figure 5. The Output Tab

As you can see, you have some choices about how much compression to apply to the output document and how images are to be converted and stored. Different options will grey-out (become unavailable) depending upon your selections. For example, if you had selected HTML or PS output, you could have specified a directory instead of a file, in which case the output would have been written to multiple files, starting at that directory.

Page: This let's you define a number of attributes for the generated pages. If you had selected HTML, this tab would be greyed out and unavailable. But we are, of course, only talking about PDFs.

Figure 6. The Page Tab

As you can see, you can select a page size. We suggest leaving this at the default setting of Universal, which will cause the page to (theoretically) adapt to the local defaults. In other words, your document should print equally well on 8 1/2" x 11" letter-size paper in the United States and A4 paper in the UK. You may select a specific page size of Letter or A4 if you know for certain your document will be used only for the one type.

You may also specify whether the pages should be formatted for two-sided printing or whether the orientation should be landscape instead of portrait. The last section allows you to specify headers and footers on each page by selecting from a range of predefined header and footer elements. The pick lists correspond to their page positions. In other words, the list on the left selects the element displayed on the left-hand side, the center list selects the center and the right selects the right. We find the default selections pleasing, so that's how we left it here.

TOC: This allows you to define the Table Of Contents (TOC) should you choose to have one.

Figure 7. The TOC Tab

First of all, you pick a number of Levels, which selects how many levels of HTML header tags (the <H1> through <H5> tags) will be examined to "pluck out" text for the table of contents. You may choose from none to four levels. We chose three. You are also allowed to set different headers and footers for TOC pages. We stayed with the defaults. You can also set a title for TOC pages. We also stayed with the default here.

What exactly does HTMLDOC pluck out for the Table of Contents? Well, basically it takes the text between "Hn" tags, starting with H1 tags and going down however many levels you specified on this screen. If you aren't using the section heading HTML tags, you won't get much of a table of contents.

Colors: This tab allows you to set colors for certain parts of the document. The defaults are nice. We didn't set anything explicitly, as you can see in Figure 8.

Figure 8. The Colors Tab

Fonts: The fonts screen allows you to set fonts and sizes. Generally, the defaults look good. We want to call your attention, however, to one detail of this screen. One of the things publishers still seem to want, even in this age of electronic documents, is a double-spaced manuscript. As you probably know, HTML doesn't cooperate in this. With HTMLDOC, however, it can. Not only can you coerce a monospace font such as Courier, but you can set the line spacing to 2, producing a double-spaced manuscript from HTML.

In any case, here's what the dialogue looks like. This is another one where, in general, the defaults look best.

Figure 9: The Fonts Tabs

PS: We thought about extending the joke that "we are only covering PDFs" by including the PS (PostScript) tab screen, but since we actually don't have the room to cover PostScript fully, we won't do that. This tab is greyed out when you're outputting HTML or PDF documents.

PDF: This dialogue controls some options in the generation of PDF files. We stuck with the defaults throughout, but let's cover a few highlights. Take a look at the screenshot in Figure 10.

Figure 10. The PDF Tab

You may select the PDF format version. We chose the default setting of Acrobat 3.0 (PDF version 1.2). You will notice the slide show options are greyed out. If you want a book that turns its own pages, use Acrobat 4.0 (PDF version 1.3) and those options will become available.

You may set an "effect" on page turns. This will cause the change from one page to the next to be accompanied by some sort of special effect, ranging from a fade to an iris in. These effects are not, however, supported by all of the PDF reader software out there. It is also cool for about three page changes, then you want to kill the person who made the document. We would advise you to avoid this, even (or perhaps especially) when making business presentation documents.

Caution! Rant ahead. Between page change effects and all the tedious nonsense one can inject into a presentation with tools like PowerPoint, meetings have become a place where technical workers are made to suffer through a sort of "arms race of the technologically maladapt". You can practically keep score as marketroids make their presentation: "Ah, he found his way to that menu." If you are in marketing, remember, engineers and programmers want you to get to the point. And bring free stuff. We are suckers for free stuff. It is management people who want to see Executive Coloring Books. End of rant.

The other choices here control some aspects of document layout. The Page Mode selection affects how the Acrobat reader behaves when the document is opened. In Document mode, the reader opens showing only the document in the workspace. In Outline mode, the document appears on the right and an outline (basically chapter titles, the text that appeared between <H1> tags in your source HTML) of the document on the left. In Fullscreen your document will fill the entire screen and no other windows or menus will appear. Don't panic! Pressing the escape key will bring back the Acrobat Reader menus, toolbar and window controls. Note that these behaviors may not be supported by other PDF readers.

The Page Layout governs how the pages appear in the work space on the Acrobat Reader screen. When you choose Single, one page appears and when you move to the next page it is redrawn aligned to the top of the workspace. You will never see two pages on the screen at the same time in this mode. When you choose Two Column Left you will see two pages side-by-side in the work space. The first page of the document will appear on the left hand side of the workspace. Scrolling is continuous and pages are not forcibly aligned to the top of the screen. Two Column Right works the same, except the first page will appear on the right hand side of the work space. These behaviors are certain to work only on the Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Finally, the First Page selection governs what page will come up first on the reader. Page 1 will select the title page if you have one, the Table of Contents if not. If you don't generate a table of contents, it will open on the first page of the first chapter. TOC will bring up the Table of Contents if you have one. Chapter 1, the default, will bring up the first page generated directly from your input HTML.

Security: The Security tag works only on PDF documents. PDF allows you to encrypt your document. We actually have no idea how strong this encryption is or if it really is encryption at all. If you are were truly curious, you could delve into the source code for HTMLDOC and find out. Personally, we wouldn't rely on PDF encryption if you are engaged in a major money-laundering scheme or espionage against a superpower. Since the protection appears to consist of a simple password, we don't see how the protection can be very strong. The security screen is shown in Figure 11.

Figure 11. The Security Tab

Basically, you can password restrict any of the capabilities you see here, preventing users from printing, modifying, annotating or copying the document. The resulting file cannot be read by Konqueror, and our copy of GNU Ghostscript returned this message:

          **** The PDF input file uses encryption and cannot be processed.
          **** Please get and install the patch available from
          **** www.ozemail.com.au/~geoffk/pdfencrypt/pdf_sec.ps
          **** On a Debian system you can also install the gs-pdfencrypt
          **** package from the non-US distribution. It can be found at
          **** ftp://nonus.debian.org/pub/debian-non-US

So you can work around this. In any case, since the encryption appears to depend on a very simple password, our guess is that it is quite easily broken. It would keep people from casually ripping off your content, however. If you have material you don't want Joe Average User printing hundreds of copies of and giving away, then this might be for you. We left encryption off.

Options: This is our last dialogue tab. Congratulations on making it through.

Figure 12. The Options Tab

Frankly, we didn't mess with anything here. One thing you may have to use is proxy settings if you are actually retrieving HTML and are behind an HTTP proxy firewall.