How to change an export template

The Pedias all come with a good selection of HTML export templates but of course everybody has their own idea about what a template should look like, which fields it should include, etc. That's why the templates are customizable so that anybody may change a template to his or her liking or even write one from scratch.

If you have never worked with HTML before but want to have a go at changing one of the Pedia export templates, then this is the site for you. It will walk you through all the necessary building blocks for a template so you get an idea of what you're dealing with and show you how to do a simple change in an HTML template.

If you are going to write a template yourself and already have a little HTML experience and probably won't need this site. Instead, you can check out our Creating Templates page which has some more advanced information about using images, global tags, etc. Also have a look at the Help file of the Pedia you're using for some useful information about tags and structure to help you with the building.

First look

Let's start with the building blocks that any HTML template has to have. The structure of a template is guided by tags, some of which have to be there for the template to function properly. They are: <head></head>, <body></body> and <html></html>. Tags always come in pairs where the first tag opens the structure and the second tag, the one with the slash in it, closes it.
The head tag contains the structure for the template, be it CSS or HTML, which tells the template HOW to display something. The html tag indicates that whatever the file contains inside is HTML. The body part contains WHAT it is you actually want to display. So a very simple template structure would look something like this:

But this 'template' wouldn't actually display anything yet since the vital parts are missing - the HOW and the WHAT.

Baby steps

Let's start with the easier part of the two vitals - the WHAT. To tell a template what to display, we use tags once again. Only these look a little different from the <head></head> tags. Instead they have the following format [key:name], where Name stands for whatever field you want the template to display right there.

For example you want to start with the title of an entry. You'd use the tag [key:title] so the template would know to substitute that tag for the actual title of the entry. If you add Title: [key:title] to the mix, the end result would look like this: Title: Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban.

Now, because the [key:name] tags are for the WHAT part of the template, they go into the <body></body> tags. Which means that our simple template from above would now look like this:

<html>
<head>

</head>

<body>

Title:[key:title]

</body>
</html>

Title: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

You could now expand the key tags to include pretty much any field you'd like, depending on which Pedia you're using. For a full list of all the key tags available, have a look at 'Importing and exporting collections' in the Help file of your Pedia application.

The HOW part of the template is a bit more complicated so we'll put that aside for now and instead do a little example of how to change an actual template to reflect the fields you want to see.

Example of how to do a simple change

To open one of the existing HTML templates for editing (as of version 3.4) use the Export feature in the Pedias, choose the HTML tab, select the template you want and press the Edit button. The program will automatically copy the template into the program's Templates folder (by default this is located in ~/Library/Application Support/[Name of the Pedia]) and prefix it with 'My' so that you will know it's a template you edited. (For example, if you choose to edit the Silver template, the program will automatically create a template named 'MySilver' for you and show it in the Finder.) Open that template with your prefered text editing program and you can get started.
You will see what looks like a lot of gibberish now but take a look and see whether you can find the <head></head>, <body></body> and <html></html> tags. They will give you a bit of an idea of the structure of the template.

Once you've found those, you can look for the tags of the fields you want to replace or get rid of. The easiest way of doing that is using the Find feature of your text editor (command-F is the keyboard shortcut). Look for 'Author' for example and when you've found its tag [key:author] you can replace it with [key:publisher], for example.

Once you've gone through all the fields you want to change, all you have to do is save the file and do your export again.

If you want to learn more about writing templates and see some of the special tags and tricks you can use, take a look at this creating templates site.