xhtml-to-pdf task

The xhtml-to-pdf task converts an xhtml file to PDF with a less/css stylesheet transformation.

Task attributes

Attribute name	Default value	Description
presentational-hints	true	Follow HTML presentational hints.
base-url	.	The base used to resolve relative URLs.

Task elements

Element name	Multiplicity	Description
input	[1..n]	The file name to include.
output	[0..1]	The name of the output file. Optional.
stylesheet	[0..n]	A less/css stylesheet to apply.

Each input element can have the following attributes:

Attribute name	Default value	Description
encoding	utf-8	The encoding of the input file.

Each output element can have the following attributes:

Attribute name	Default value	Description
encoding	utf-8	The encoding of the output file.

Each stylesheet element can have the following attributes:

Attribute name	Default value	Description
test	n/a	Expression that decides whether the stylesheet is applied.

When a stylesheet element refers to a less stylesheet, than the stylesheet element can have any number of additional attributes. These attributes will be passed to the less compiler as variables.

Task behaviour

The xhtml input will be transformed into a PDF by applying the stylesheets.

Example

The pipeline

pipeline:

    load:
        input: "document.xhtml"

    xhtml-to-pdf: presentational-hints="false"
        stylesheet: font-size="12pt" "htmlbook.less"
        stylesheet: test="debug" "htmlbook-debug.css"
        stylesheet: "additional.css"
        output: "document.pdf"

will generate a PDF by applying three consecutive stylesheets:

1. the common htmlbook stylesheet, with a base font size of 12pt
2. if the debug flag is passed on the command line, the htmlbook-debug stylesheet is appoied (which will mark certain errors in red)
3. finally, an additional local stylesheet is applied