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Title Styling for Informal Topics (PDF)

If you have informal topics (sidebars) with titles in your content, use the PDF Layout to style the titles.

By default, informal topics do not have title elements. This is because in Paligo they are most commonly used as a "container" for a group of elements that you want to reuse. But it is possible to add a title element manually and it is valid DocBook XML.

Note

The Section titles category also has General settings that apply to all titles. But your choices for the informal topic titles take priority over the General settings.

To style informal topic titles:

  1. Select Layout in the top menu.

    Paligo editor. The Layout option in the header menu is highlighted.

    Paligo displays a list of Layouts. The list is empty if there are no custom Layouts in your Paligo instance.

  2. Select the PDF Layout you are going to use for publishing. Alternatively, create a new one (see Create a Layout).

  3. Select Section titles.

  4. Select Informal topic (sidebar).

  5. Use the Set the font size for informal topic title setting to control the size of the lettering.

  6. Use Font weight for informal topic title to set the thickness of the characters.

  7. Use Font style for informal topic title to add or remove emphasis styling from the text. Choose Normal for regular text, Italic for forward leaning text, or Backslant for backwards-leaning text.

    Note

    Using Backslant can produce poor results, as many fonts do not support it as a separate outline.

  8. Set the Font variant for informal topic title to normal for regular sized, mixed case letters or small-caps for smaller, upper-case letters.

  9. Use Set the color for informal topic title to apply a custom color to the text in the title.

    1. Clear the Use default color checkbox to select a color of your own choice.

    2. Set the color either by:

      • Entering an RGBA code for the color you want (1).

      • Selecting the Color square to display the color selector (2).

        1. Choose the color with the spectrum bar (3).

        2. Control the transparency with the opacity bar (4).

        3. Choose the color shade with the main color panel (5).

        Color selector. There is a field for entering an rgba value. It is labelled 1. There is a black square labelled 2. There is a popup dialog that contains three sections. The sections are labelled with numbers. Label 3 points to a narrow bar that shows the colors of the spectrum. Label 4 points towards an opacity bar ranging from black to transparent. Label 5 points to a color selector with various shades of a single color.

  10. Set the Line height for informal topic title. The line height is the amount of space between lines of text in the title.

    Enter either:

    • An absolute value with the units of measurement, for example, 14pt

    • A relative value, such as 0.8em or 80%

    • normal for 120% (multiplies font size by 1.2).

    Leave the field blank to inherit this value from the base Layout (see Layout Relationships - Base, New, Duplicate).

  11. Use Font-family for informal topic title to choose the typeface for the text.

  12. Set the Capitalization for informal topic title. This controls whether characters are shown in upper case, lower case, or a combination of the two.

  13. Set the Letter spacing for informal topic title. This is the amount of horizontal spacing between each letter.

    To increase the amount of spacing, enter:

    • A relative amount and units of measurement, for example, 0.2rem

    • An absolute amount and units of measurement, for example, 1px

    To decrease the amount of spacing, enter a negative relative or absolute amount, for example, -1px.

  14. Use the space settings to control the amount of space above and below the title element.

    The Space-before.optimum is for the space above and the Space-after.optimum is for the space below. Enter a value and its units of measurement, for example, 1.2em or 6pt.

    Note

    These are different to margin settings, as they define a maximum amount of space. For example, if you have an element with a space-after.optimum of 4pt and the next element has a space-before.optimum of 4pt, the space is 4pt. It works as a maximum amount of space, not a sum total.

    Also, Space-before.optimum and Space-after.optimum are normally ignored at the boundary of pages and columns.

  15. Select Save.

When you use this Layout to publish to PDF, Paligo will apply your chosen styles to any informal topic titles in your content.