Documentation Publicon User Guide Advanced Features Creating Document Palettes

Creating New Document Palettes

Introduction

Publicon includes a set of document palettes that provide a point-and-click interface for creating documents formatted according to a specific style. The most prominent of these is the default document palette that appears on the screen when you first start Publicon. In addition, there are several other document palettes, each implementing the styles associated with a specific style sheet. These palettes are all listed under the File New menu.

You can create new document palettes of your own to supplement the predefined palettes. Using a customized document palette makes it easy to create documents conforming to a specific format, particularly if you need to create many documents with the same style sheet.

Each document palette is defined by a source notebook. The notebooks for Publicon's standard document palettes can be found in the Publicon layout in the AddOns/Autoload/Publicon/PaletteSource directory (see the section on Custom Modules for the location of the palette source files for AMS, APS, BioMed Central, and palettes). The simplest way to create a new document palette is to open the notebook for one of the existing document palettes and then modify it by adding or removing buttons according to your needs.

The process of creating a new document palette involves the following steps:

1. Open the notebook for one of the predefined document palettes. For example, to create a palette that is similar to the Publicon default document palette, open the notebook called DefaultSrc.nb located in AddOns/Autoload/Publicon/PaletteSource.

2. Each cell in this notebook corresponds to a specific button or collapsible tab in the document palette. Edit the notebook by adding, removing, modifying, or rearranging the buttons as desired. You can rename them by selecting and editing the button contents (the buttons are inactive in the source files).

3. Click the Make Palette button at the bottom of the notebook. This converts the notebook into a new document palette and prompts you to save it. Choose a name that will apply to a module as a whole, not just the palette, since the palette will be saved as part of a module (see the section on Custom Modules for more details). On Macintosh the palette will not have the same window frame as other palettes until you close and reopen it. For all platforms the contents of the palette may not display until closing and reopening as well.

4. In order for the palette to appear in the File New menu, place the newly created module in the Autoload directory in your Publicon preferences (for preferences paths see the Getting Started: Troubleshooting section for your platform) and restart Publicon.

Once your module is created, you will probably want to add a customized style sheet. The section on Custom Modules describes where the style sheet belongs in the module layout, and style sheet editing is discussed in Using Style Sheets. If your style sheet is placed in the proper location, it will automatically appear in the style sheets menu when Publicon starts up after installing your new module.

Note: When creating a custom palette and style sheet combination by starting with a built-in Publicon palette, the custom document palette's style sheet title must be edited to contain the name of the custom style sheet. Most of the buttons on Publicon's built-in document palettes employ a feature for confirming the user's document is configured with the expected style sheet. The style sheet name is extracted from the title of the style sheet embedded in the document palette. For example, open Book1Src.nb and select Edit Style Sheet... from the Format menu. The title cell in the style sheet reads: "Book1.nb Document Palette Styles". "Book1.nb" at the beginning of the title is the name of the style sheet that must be applied to any document a user will format with this palette.