Print a single book from a multi-book online help system

[candeeh]

We have a unique issue that I am hoping someone else on this board may have run into before, and who can offer a solution.

We have a single online help system that includes several main books. The books are, User, Reports, Administration, and Installation/Upgrade. Each book includes many related topics, each of which is in its own topic file. Our audience wants to be able to print all the topics in a single book from the online help, without having to print each topic file separately, or without haveing to print the whole help system. Have any of you run into this type of issue before? The only solution I have been able to come up with is to create a PDF of each book and then place a link as the very first topic in each book. When the user clicks on the link, it will open the PDF in their PDF reader from which they can view and print. Seems easy enough, but the catch is, our users want to be able to just click a link and have the book print out, not open in their PDF reader. Is there maybe some JavaScript code that could be used to accomplish this task? If so, do any of you know the code and are willing to share it?

Thank you so much for any help you can offer!
Candee Hellberg
P.S. I added this post to the Printed Documentation Targets forum because it involves printing a PDF from the online help. If this post is not in the correct forum, please accept my appologies and please move it to where it needs to go.

[LTinker68]

You can do something to what MadCap does on their help -- have multiple PDF outputs available for opening and printing. So instead of printing a web page, the user would open a PDF you already created that contains all the topics in the book, and the user prints that PDF.

[candeeh]

Hi Lisa,

That is exactly what I had suggested to the team, however, they want to be able to just print a book from the navigation pane instead of opening a PDF and then printing it. That is why I asked if maybe it could be done using JavaScript.

Thanks

Candee

[i-tietz]

Seems easy enough, but the catch is, our users want to be able to just click a link and have the book print out, not open in their PDF reader.

Your users are probably used to HTML Help - it's possible there. But that print doesn't really look pretty because it uses default browser settings and not your stylesheet (giant font-sizes for the headings and everything in Times Roman - at least for me) *shudder*

There might be a way with javascript, but you still need a PDF for each book and you would need to find a naming algorithm ... and the books would have to be folders in the file system or ...
E.g.: You have a button in each topic that finds out in what book the topic is and prints a PDF with a name that can be retrieved from ... the topic? the folder? something else?
Not easy, that, ... and you would definitely have to know your way around with javascript ...

[NorthEast]

That is exactly what I had suggested to the team, however, they want to be able to just print a book from the navigation pane instead of opening a PDF and then printing it. That is why I asked if maybe it could be done using JavaScript.

I'd probably ask why they don't want to open a PDF, and what is meant by "just print a book from the navigation pane".

Also, what is the output that you actually want to print?
If it's a PDF, then I'm not sure what's wrong with displaying it in the PDF viewer, as a lot of users will already be quite familiar with that. It would also mean they can initially see what the document contains and how large it is, before they decide whether they want to print it. And they would also have control of the print options; e.g. they may only want to print a selection of pages, or print multiple pages per sheet.

If you want a navigation link that prints the book directly, I'd consider what the user experience is going to be like. Will it be obvious from the link's icon and label that it will directly print a whole book (rather than navigate to a topic)? Will the user know what the book contains or how large it is? The user might not be happy if they click the link out of curiosity and it immediately sends a 50-page document to their printer.