Variables you can use in PDF Templates

There are a few variables you can use in custom PDF templates.

[[Document_Title]] - The name of the document.

[[File_Name]] - The name of the PDF file.

[[Date]] - The date in the format that your system is configured to use.

[[Date_Time]] - The date and time in the format your system is configured to use.

[[YYYY-MM-DD]] - Year, month and date.

[[YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS]] - Year, month, date, hours, minutes and seconds. 24-hour clock.

[[YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS 12HR]] - Year, month date, hours, minutes  and seconds. 12-hour clock with AM/PM.

[[MM/DD/YYYY HH:MM:SS 12HR]] - Year, month date, hours, minutes  and seconds. 12-hour clock with AM/PM.

[[MM/DD/YYYY]] - Month, day and year.

[[DD/MM/YYYY]] - Day, month and year.

[[YYYY]] - Year

Header, Footer, Title Page Header and Title Page Footer Fields

[[Page_Number]] - The page number.

[[Page_Count]] - The total number of pages.

Footer Numbering Field

20 Comments

Hans

Would be nice if HTML entities (like (r) or (c)) could be used.

Trevor DeVore

@Hans - you can just type the copyright symbol or registered trademark symbol directly into the fields in Clarify.

Keith

Would be good to have a shortcode for just the year (something like [[YYYY]]) or more control over the date formatting. I would like to have the © followed by an updating year.

Trevor DeVore

@Keith - [[YYYY]] will be available in the next Clarify update.

Julian Prior

Would also be good to allow Creative Commons license icons/symbols for those of us creating documentation that we'd like to release openly.

Patrick Spang

Would also be nice for us Europeans to be able to use the variable
[[DD/MM/YYYY]] - Day, month and year.

;))

Trevor DeVore

@Patrick - That format will be available in the next update.

Des Dougan

Is it possible to create a footer in three sections - left justified, centre and right justified? I'd like to have document title on the left, page number in the centre and date of creation on the right.

Can this be done with a CSS div definition? If so, an example would be great.

Thanks,

Des

Trevor DeVore

@Des:

You could pull this off but it will require a couple of manual tweaks. First, you need to change the HTML in the article-layout.html file in your template folder. Change the existing "footer" div to this:

<div class="footer">

<div class="footer-inset">
<div id="footer-left">{{footer_text}}</div>
<div id="footer-center"></div>
<div id="footer-right"></div>
</div>
</div>

Next, you need to manually insert the date the PDF is generated on using JavaScript. Scroll down in the article-layout.html file and find the following line:

PDF.encrypt = {{PDFencrypt}};

Above it place the following JavaScript:

var date = new Date();

var day = date.getDate();
var month = date.getMonth();
var year = date.getFullYear();

document.getElementById("footer-right").innerHTML = day + '/' + month + '/' + year;

Finally, add the following to your custom CSS tab for the template:

 div.footer .footer-inset div {

display: table-cell;
/* border: 1px solid #000; */ /* For testing */
width: 33%;
}

div.footer #footer-left { text-align: left; }
div.footer #footer-center { text-align: center; }
div.footer #footer-right { text-align: right; }

div.footer #footer-center {
content: {{page_numbering}};
}

Shawn

None of the date or time variables seem to work on the Mac version. The render simply prints the variable string. Ie, [[Date]] renders literally as "[[Date]]"

Trevor DeVore

@Shawn - I just tested adding [[Date]] to the footer field and it worked on Mac. If you are putting the variable strings in the same fields as show in this article then maybe send your template to [email protected] so we can take a look.

Svenja

Is it possible to add a "version" in the footnote which updates automatically like [[Date]]?

Trevor DeVore

@Svenja - not at this time.

Ian

Is it possible to have different headers and footers for title and other pages? I'd like to have current header (logo + large text document title) and web address on title page with document title (body text or similar), aligned right, as header and copyright info and page number as footer on subsequent pages.
Apologies if I've missed something obvious!

Trevor DeVore

@Ian - There isn't a way to do this from the Clarify interface. It could be done if the PDF template was modified by hand to add an additional header/footer to be used on the pages following the title page. This manual shows where to modify files by hand:

http://help.clarify-it.com/m/pdf-templates

Mike Overholt

How can I center the footer?

Trevor DeVore

@Mike Clarify doesn't provide a way to center the footer. Someone with HTML and CSS knowledge could modify the HTML/CSS for the PDF template by hand, however. http://help.clarify-it.com/m/pdf-templates

Mike Overholt

@Trevor DeVore, thanks for the reply. I've added the following Custom CSS and it doesn't seem to be seeing it.

.footer-text {
text-align: center:
font-style: italic;
}

Trevor DeVore

@Mike - the .footer-text is a span tag. If you want to center it you would use this:

.footer-text {
text-align: center:
font-style: italic;
display: block;
}

It will look a little weird as the page number will still be on the right and above the footer text. If you hide the page numbering then it would work. Otherwise you are back to modifying the HTML to center things properly.

Mike Overholt

@Trevor - Thanks, I appreciate the help. I understand what's happening now.

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