Customizing DocJet Output

DocJet provides three main ways for you to customize your output. The first tier are named styles. In the HTML-based output formats all the constructs produced by DocJet have CSS tags. That means you can precisely control things like fonts, borders, and colors simply by manipulating the cascading stylesheet (.css file). In the printable output, the same thing applies, only with Microsoft Word styles instead of CSS stylesheets.

The second most common set of customization involve page elements that most people will want to customize. For instance, corporate logos, product logos, copyright statements. These are controlled through the DocJet "project". A "DocJet project" is much like a software project - it specifies what source files to include, build rules, etc.

If what you want to do goes beyond these simple sorts of things, you can use the DocJet Output Format Editor. DocJet builds output based on what we call an "output format" which is really a program that controls how your output is generated. The output format editor is the same tool we use to create output formats, so you really have the capability to create any sort of output you like.

Of course, modifying an output format, like modifying any sophisticated program that you didn't write, is difficult. Even with the extensive documentation, tutorials and examples provided by the DocJet documentation, it's not easy. Still, the output format editor can be used to do some amazing transformations on your source code.