Native PDF: Customizing new Page Layout

[TimothyJ]

In the settings of a template in Native PDF, AEM Guides Cloud there are a number of standard pages: TOC, Glossary, Citations, Empty Pages, Chapters & Topics.

These are referred to by the bookmap in the following way:

​​  

<booklists>
     <glossarylist></glossarylist>

     <toc></toc>
</booklists>

I want to enable a new page in the templates called "blankpage". It will be a plt file the same as the others and I want to refer to it in my map within the booklists tag as below:

​<booklists>

     <glossarylist></glossarylist>

     <blankpage></blankpage>
     <toc></toc>
</booklists>

I understand that I need to customize Native PDF​.

How?  Where are the XSL files? Is there any documentation on this?

[rkody]

In Native PDF I don't think you need to put the page layouts in your bookmap.

If you navigate to the output tab you can create a new template or edit an existing template.

Create and customize Native PDF templates | Adobe Experience Manager

The setting you are looking for is the Page Layout Order:

Native PDF Publish Feature | Components of a PDF template | Adobe Experience Manager

The template will take care of the page order for you. So what you will need to do is:

1. Create a "Blank Page" page layout in a Native PDF Template

2. Add the "Blank Page" to the "Page Layout Order" settings of the template

3. Order the pages the way that you want and turn on the pages that you want in "Page Layout Order"

[Aditya_Chabuku]

Hi @TimothyJ ,

We faced a similar challenge recently and solved it using two different approaches. You can try whichever suits you better:

Approach 1:
We didn't require a glossary list in our PDF generation, so we repurposed it as a blank page by making changes in the Page Layout section of the PDF Templates. This setup displays a blank page with a custom message whenever we use the glossary list in the bookmarks.
Downside: If you need the glossary list section, this approach won’t work.

Approach 2:
In the Page Layout section of the PDF Templates, go to the CSS section, create a class called blank_page, and assign the Blank Page layout to it. Reference this CSS section within the XML content, and the PDF will render a blank page wherever it’s called.

Let me know which one works best for you!

Cheers,
Aditya