Re: questions about XMLmind DITA Editor

Z. wrote:
> 
> I am working on a technical book written in DITA with some figures in
> PNG format.
> I need some software to publish my book in PDF and EPUB3 formats for commercial
> purposes. I am interested in XMLMind, but I have two sets of questions:
> 
> (1) What type of customer support can I get? To be specific, I would
> like know the
>       following tricks:
> 
>      - How to start the first chapter of a volume at page and chapter numbers
>            other than one?
> 
>      - How to use the dropped capital feature on the first letter
>            in the first paragraph of a chapter?
> 
>      - How to set page margins?
> 
>      - How to customize header / footer so that they can be
>            different on odd and even pages?
> 
>      - How to keep a large table on the same page, instead of being
>            split between two pages?
> 
>      - How to prevent a word from being separated at the end of a line?
> 
>      - Other similar things I might need.

All your questions are related to the way a DITA document is converted 
to PDF and EPUB3.

Our product is a DITA *editor*, not a publishing software. Indeed, it 
can convert a DITA document to several output formats, but customizing 
the output, while quite possible (we have a graphical tool which makes 
this relatively quick and safe: the "XMLmind XSL Customizer" helper 
application) requires you to really understand how this output is 
created, namely to understand the XSL technology.

See the "Customize Document Conversion Stylesheets" dialog box: 
https://www.xmlmind.com/xmleditor/_distrib/doc/help/ConversionStylesheetsEditor_intro.html

See the "XMLmind XSL Customizer" application: 
https://www.xmlmind.com/xmleditor/_distrib/doc/help/com.xmlmind.xslcustom.Customizer.html



> 
>      I am not sure support A, B, C, D will cover the above. 

"C. Help me customize the output of the "Convert Document" submenu", 
could be understand as if it covered the above. See "Support policy", 
https://www.xmlmind.com/xmleditor/support_policy.html.

This is definitely not the case. We merely give you leads about what you 
can do and also, sometime, give you a quick start by answering at most a 
couple of questions, (e.g. "How to customize header / footer so that 
they can be different on odd and even pages").





> I don't
> even know what is a
>      configuration. 

You don't need to. The "XMLmind XSL Customizer" application will take 
care of that. See "Options", "Customize Configuration" menu, "Customize 
Document Conversion Stylesheets" menu item, 
https://www.xmlmind.com/xmleditor/_distrib/doc/help/customizeConfigurationMenu.html

However, given what you want to achieve,  you must really understand how 
this output is created, namely to understand the XSL technology.




> I am not a DITA expert at all.
> 
>      I will go over the online document, but I need someone to help me
> if something is not
>      documented or I cannot figure it out myself after reading the document.
> 
> (2) I am considering the DITA Editor Professional Edition.
>      My question is: Can I run DITA editor on both Windows and Ubuntu
> Linux?  

Sure.




> I might need
>      to use fonts available on Windows because I am not sure fonts on
> Ubuntu are good enough.
> 



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