Hello.
My question is not strictly Prince-related, but I suppose some of you had to solve similar problems.
I'm currently playing around with the Prince demo, and I really like the results I get. So far, I have mainly tried to turn long, well-formatted HTML pages with a few images into PDF booklets, and the results are great.
Another thing I'd like to do is a more design-oriented stuff: Several images and text boxes with a mix of font types and sizes placed on one page (think ads or brochures), next page with a different layout. This is something I'd usually do in Adobe InDesign.
Personally, I do know how to achieve the results I want with HTML & CSS typed straight into BBEdit. However, this is... counter-intuitive and slow, to say the least. Create content in DIVs, type positioning and width values into the CSS file, render, edit, repeat...
It would be nice to just have an editor where you draw a few boxes on a page (with a “magnetic” grid and a ruler that can be set to inches or mm), adjust DIV positions and sizes with the mouse, drop some content in there... And have Prince render the results from the HTML/CSS this editor writes as a PDF. But of course, all WYSIWYG HTML editors out there have been developed for web content/browsers; they know nothing about mm-based page boundaries.
So: Can anyone here recommend a visual editor to build fairly complex, page-based layouts that will create "Prince-friendly" (i.e., clean, easy to edit, standards-compliant) HTML5 and CSS? Some post-editing wouldn't be a problem, as long as the basic code is clean and comprehensible.
If this is easy to use, I might be able to justify getting a full Prince _Server_ license instead of just a $500 Professional license, so several people in my team can create “HTML first” content. We could get rid of InDesign for brochures etc. and create web-friendly content at the same time.
I'm open both to open source and commercial software (preferably for less than $500/seat). OS X and web-based preferred, but Windows might work as well.
Thanks a lot!
My question is not strictly Prince-related, but I suppose some of you had to solve similar problems.
I'm currently playing around with the Prince demo, and I really like the results I get. So far, I have mainly tried to turn long, well-formatted HTML pages with a few images into PDF booklets, and the results are great.
Another thing I'd like to do is a more design-oriented stuff: Several images and text boxes with a mix of font types and sizes placed on one page (think ads or brochures), next page with a different layout. This is something I'd usually do in Adobe InDesign.
Personally, I do know how to achieve the results I want with HTML & CSS typed straight into BBEdit. However, this is... counter-intuitive and slow, to say the least. Create content in DIVs, type positioning and width values into the CSS file, render, edit, repeat...
It would be nice to just have an editor where you draw a few boxes on a page (with a “magnetic” grid and a ruler that can be set to inches or mm), adjust DIV positions and sizes with the mouse, drop some content in there... And have Prince render the results from the HTML/CSS this editor writes as a PDF. But of course, all WYSIWYG HTML editors out there have been developed for web content/browsers; they know nothing about mm-based page boundaries.
So: Can anyone here recommend a visual editor to build fairly complex, page-based layouts that will create "Prince-friendly" (i.e., clean, easy to edit, standards-compliant) HTML5 and CSS? Some post-editing wouldn't be a problem, as long as the basic code is clean and comprehensible.
If this is easy to use, I might be able to justify getting a full Prince _Server_ license instead of just a $500 Professional license, so several people in my team can create “HTML first” content. We could get rid of InDesign for brochures etc. and create web-friendly content at the same time.
I'm open both to open source and commercial software (preferably for less than $500/seat). OS X and web-based preferred, but Windows might work as well.
Thanks a lot!