PubSuite Classic

PubSuite Classic is a professional XML-to-PDF editor. You write your document in a structured XML format, style each element through the sidebar panels, and export a pixel-perfect PDF — with a live preview that matches the output exactly.

Getting Started

When you open the editor you see three main areas:

• Sidebar — tabs for every document setting: Document, Styles, H/F, TOC, Footnotes, Assets, Mapping, Inline, Presets.
• XML Editor — Monaco-powered editor with syntax highlighting. Every change re-renders the preview in real time.
• Live Preview — a canvas rendering that matches the exported PDF exactly. Click any text block to edit it inline.

XML Editor

The editor uses Monaco (the engine behind VS Code) with full XML syntax highlighting, bracket matching, and auto-indentation.

Basic Document Structure

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<document>
  <heading1>Chapter One</heading1>
  <paragraph>Your text goes here.</paragraph>
  <heading2>A Sub-heading</heading2>
  <paragraph>More text.</paragraph>
</document>

Inline Markup

Keyboard Shortcuts

Live Preview

The preview renders your document exactly as it will appear in the exported PDF — same fonts, same layout engine, same measurements.

• Click to edit inline — click any text block to edit directly without switching to the XML editor.
• Zoom controls — use the − / + buttons, or Fit to fit the page width.
• Page count — shown in the toolbar. Long documents paginate automatically.
• Real-time update — the preview refreshes as you type, after a short debounce delay.

Document Panel

The Doc tab controls the page itself.

Page Size & Margins

Set width and height in mm, pt, or inches. Common presets include A4, A5, Letter, Legal, and book trim sizes. Margins can be set independently on all four sides.

Base Typography

• Base font — default font for any tag without its own style. Built-in: Helvetica, Times-Roman, Courier.
• Base size — default font size in pt.
• Smart quotes — converts " and ' to typographic quotes.
• Ligatures — enables fi, fl, ff ligature substitutions for uploaded OpenType fonts.
• Top reference — controls whether line leading is measured from cap height, x-height, or full em.

Document Metadata

Title, author, subject, keywords, date, and language now live in the A11y tab, alongside PDF/UA accessibility settings — see Accessibility & Metadata. This keeps document metadata in one place, since it's tied to XML detection and PDF export in ways page settings aren't.

Typography & Styles

The Styles tab defines how each XML tag looks. Every tag can have its own style.

Style Properties

Bullets & List Counters

Bullet glyphs and numbered-list counters are both configured on the tag's style card and each get a full, independent set of controls: font, color, size, height reference, a vertical reference point (baseline / cap height / x-height / em box) that the bullet or counter is centered against, then a manual horizontal and vertical offset (each with its own unit) on top of that. Counters also have their own prefix and suffix text fields.

Style Mapping

The Map tab lets you create tag aliases — e.g. map p → paragraph.

The same tab also has a separate Tag → Metadata Field Mappings section, for pointing a specific XML tag straight at a document metadata field (Title, Author, Subject, Keywords, Date, or Language) instead of a style. This is different from a style mapping: a metadata-mapped tag is removed from the rendered body entirely and its text is used to fill in the metadata field. See Document Metadata & Auto-Detection for details and when you'd need this instead of the automatic detection.

Inline Styles

The Inline tab defines styles for inline elements within a parent tag.

Presets

Ready-made document configurations for common use cases. Includes citation standards (Chicago, APA, MLA, Harvard, IEEE) and document structures (Novel, Report, Newsletter, Screenplay, Dissertation). Built-in presets can't be edited or deleted — only your own saved presets get Edit and Delete buttons.

Apply Modes

• Apply — applies everything: page size, margins, base typography, and all style definitions.
• Page — applies only page size and margins.
• Styles — applies only typography settings.

Preset Configurator

Click + New Preset to open the full-screen configurator. Left side: intent cards for a quick starting point, a page size slider, then margin, text size, and text density sliders — each of those three paired with a number field for typing an exact value the slider itself might not reach (page size isn't, since it steps through named sizes like A4 or Letter rather than a plain number). Font is a direct dropdown; orientation and column count are picker buttons; header/footer can be toggled on with basic left/center/right text.

Every property this configures — font size, margins, column count — is a main setting for the preset as a whole. It's meant to get you to a reasonable starting point fast, not to replace the Typography panel for detailed, per-tag adjustments; anything more specific (a particular tag's bullet style, its exact indent, a border) is still edited normally after applying the preset.

Advanced Style Editor — a button switches the right-hand preview over to a full-width per-tag editor, where the preset can define exact starting styles (font, size, spacing, alignment, and more) for specific tags rather than just the document-wide basics on the left.

Reset to Default — discards whatever's been changed in the current editing session and reloads the preset's last-saved values (or a blank starting point, for a brand-new preset that hasn't been saved yet).

Header & Footer

The H/F tab has two modes. Simple gives you one text field per header/footer, with its own dedicated font, size, unit, height reference, color, alignment, and vertical position reference controls right there in the panel. Advanced splits that into left/center/right text fields instead, plus a layout-mode setting and separator line options — but has no dedicated styling controls of its own; each zone is styled through the Typography panel via a "parent" tag named after it (header-left, header-center, and so on — see Typography & Styles for how that works, and the XML section below for styling individual pieces within a zone).

Placeholders in Simple/Advanced text fields

Rich Headers & Footers via XML

For anything beyond plain text, write a <header> or <footer> block directly in your XML, as a direct child of the root, with <left>, <center>, and <right> zone children:

<header>
  <left><label>Confidential</label></left>
  <right>Page <pagenum/></right>
</header>
<footer>
  <center>Copyright <i>2026</i></center>
</footer>

Once a document has a <header>/<footer> block, it takes over completely from the Simple/Advanced text fields for that header or footer — the panel fields become a fallback only for documents that don't use this. Inside a zone:

• Any tag you invent (like <label> above) becomes its own real tag, detected and styled through the normal Typography panel exactly like a body tag.
• Plain text not wrapped in any tag is styled through a "parent" tag named after the zone — header-left, header-center, header-right, and the same three for footer-* — which also shows up in the Typography panel once that header/footer is enabled.
• <pagenum/> inserts the current page number, styleable independently from surrounding text.
• Inline formatting (<b>, <i>, <u>, <color>) and multi-line zones via <br/> both work normally.
• Only font, size, and color apply within a zone — alignment comes from which zone it is, and paragraph-level properties like spacing or indents don't apply to a single header/footer line.

Vertical Space

Each header/footer has its own layout mode: Use document margin (default) keeps it inside your existing top/bottom margin, clipping anything that doesn't fit; Custom height instead reserves an explicit, fixed height for it — useful for a multi-line header/footer that needs more room than the margin allows.

Table of Contents

The TOC tab generates an automatic table of contents from your headings. Choose which tags to include and set the leader character (dots, dashes, underline, or none). The TOC is inserted before the first page and updates automatically.

Entry text styling comes from the normal Typography panel — toc_title for the "Table of Contents" heading itself, and toc0, toc1, toc2 for each nesting level, styled exactly like any other tag.

Leader Styling

The leader (the dots connecting an entry to its page number) uses the entry's own font/size/color by default. Check Style leader separately to give it its own font, color, size with height reference, a vertical reference point with manual H/V-offset, and letter spacing — independent from the entry text around it.

Footnotes

Use the <fn> tag inline:

<paragraph>This claim is disputed<fn>See Johnson, 2019, p. 42.</fn>.</paragraph>

The FN tab controls font, separator rule, reference mark style, and line spacing. Footnotes are numbered automatically per-page or per-document.

Assets

Custom Fonts

Upload TTF or OTF font files. Once uploaded, the font name is available in the style editor. Ligatures and kerning are applied automatically. Fonts are embedded in the exported PDF.

Images

<image src="my-photo.jpg" width="120" height="80" />

Width and height are in points. Images are embedded in the PDF.

Accessibility & Metadata

The A11y tab has two things: a PDF/UA accessibility toggle, and Document Metadata (title, author, subject, keywords, date, language).

Document Metadata

Each field can come from two independent places, and it's worth being clear about how they relate:

• Type a value directly into the field — this always works, with no XML involved, and is what ends up in the exported PDF's own metadata regardless of anything else.
• Or use a <metadata>/<head>/<front>/<docinfo> block in your XML (see Document Metadata & Auto-Detection) — once a tag exists there for a field, that field's value comes from the XML and the panel field becomes read-only, showing exactly what's in your document. Edit the XML to change it, not the panel.

Next to each field is an Also render in document checkbox. This is only about whether that value also shows up as visible text in the page itself — it's disabled until the field is XML-backed (a value typed directly, with no matching XML tag, has nothing to render from), and checking or unchecking it never creates, edits, or removes anything in your XML. To add a metadata tag to your document, write it directly in the XML; the panel picks it up automatically.

Master Pages

A master page is a named, reusable page layout — its own size, margins, and optional header/footer override — that a section of your document can switch to. There's no dedicated panel for this yet; it's set up through the AI Assistant and used from your XML.

Defining a Master

Create a chapter-opener master page with a 120pt top margin

A master can also extend another master, inheriting whatever fields it doesn't set itself, and carry style overrides — specific tag properties (like a heading's color) that only apply while that master is active, layered on top of the tag's normal style rather than replacing it.

Using a Master

<pagebreak master="chapter-opener"/>

Switches to that master starting from the next page. A plain <pagebreak/> with no attributes just starts a new page on whichever master is currently active.

Master Sequences

For alternating layouts — a different master for the very first page, then odd pages, then even pages — define a sequence and activate it once:

<pagebreak sequence="book"/>

From that point, every page — including ones created automatically when content overflows, not just explicit page breaks — picks its master from the sequence's rules, until a different sequence or an explicit master="..." takes over.

AI Assistant

Click the AI button in the toolbar to open the AI drawer. The assistant makes changes to your document settings using natural language.

What the AI can do

• Apply a citation style or document structure preset
• Set page size and margins
• Change base font, size, and line spacing
• Edit style properties for any tag
• Enable headers, footers, and page numbers
• Enable the table of contents
• Define and update master pages, including inheritance and per-master style overrides — see Master Pages
• Find and replace text in the document

Example prompts

Apply Chicago style 17th edition
Set page to A5 with 20mm margins
Make heading1 bold, 18pt, centered with 24pt space before
Enable page numbers in the footer centered
Add a table of contents for heading1 and heading2
Create a chapter-opener master page with a 120pt top margin

PDF Export

Click ↓ PDF in the toolbar. All fonts and images are embedded. The layout engine that generates the PDF is the same one that renders the live preview — output matches exactly.

Projects

• Save — saves the current XML and all style settings as a .json file.
• Load — opens a saved project file and restores XML and styles exactly.
• New — clears the editor and starts a blank document.

XML Reference

Document Root

Every document must start with <?xml version="1.0"?> and have a single root element. By convention this is <document>, but any name works — <academicPaper>, <article>, <book>, whatever fits your source. Inner tag names below the root are equally free-form: any tag you use gets picked up automatically and can be styled from the Typography panel (use Detect Tags to add all of them at once).

Document Metadata & Auto-Detection

If a <metadata>, <head>, <front>, or <docinfo> element appears as a direct child of the root, Pub Suite scans its children and fills in the Document panel's metadata fields automatically — no need to rename or restructure your XML first. Recognised tag names (case-insensitive) are:

Matching is depth-agnostic — <author><name>Jane Doe</name></author> resolves to the same author value as a flat <author>Jane Doe</author>. A tag that repeats — most commonly a wrapper of individual <keyword> entries — has its values joined with a comma automatically. Every metadata element consumed this way is removed from the rendered document body; it will not show up as a stray paragraph.

If your XML uses a metadata tag name that isn't in the table above (e.g. <editor>), it's left out of the automatic fields, but nothing is silently lost — the Document panel shows a notice listing exactly which tags weren't matched. From there, open the Map tab and add a Tag → Metadata Field Mapping to point that tag at whichever field it belongs to (Title, Author, Subject, Keywords, Date, or Language), choose whether to read only the tag's own text or flatten everything nested inside it, and set a join separator if the tag repeats. A manual mapping always takes priority over the automatic guesses above.

Common Block Tags

Well-formed XML Rules

• Every opening tag must have a closing tag
• Self-closing tags end with />
• Tags must be properly nested — they cannot overlap
• Attribute values must be quoted
• Use & for &, < for <, > for >

PubSuite Classic 2 Beta

Classic 2 is the advanced editor for multilingual publishing and precision typography. It supports Arabic, Hebrew, and other right-to-left scripts alongside Latin text, with full bidirectional layout and per-character typographic control.

Getting Started

The workspace is identical to Classic — sidebar, XML editor, and live preview. Classic 2 adds the Bilingual panel for managing multiple scripts, and the Fonts panel for selecting and assigning fonts per language.

• Sidebar — Document settings, Styles, Fonts, H/F, TOC, Footnotes, Assets, Bilingual panel.
• XML Editor — Monaco editor, same as Classic.
• Live Preview — SVG-based rendering. Click any block to edit inline.

XML Editor

The XML editor works identically to Classic — Monaco with syntax highlighting, find & replace, and auto-indentation. The document structure is the same XML format.

Language Tags

Classic 2 adds language block and inline tags for multilingual documents. These are inserted automatically by the Bilingual panel but can also be written directly:

<!-- Block-level: wrap an entire paragraph in a language -->
<arabic>النص العربي هنا</arabic>
<hebrew>טקסט עברי כאן</hebrew>
<english>English paragraph here</english>

<!-- Inline: switch language within a paragraph -->
<paragraph>This contains <ar>كلمة عربية</ar> inline.</paragraph>

Keyboard Shortcuts

Live Preview

The preview shows your document exactly as it will appear in the export. Arabic and Hebrew blocks render right-to-left, and you can click any block to edit it inline.

• Click to edit inline — click any text block to edit it. RTL text is handled correctly: typing Arabic moves the cursor leftward.
• Zoom controls — − / + buttons and Fit.
• RTL rendering — Arabic and Hebrew blocks render right-to-left automatically based on the language tag.
• Ligatures — fi, fl, and Arabic ligatures are applied automatically.

Document Panel

Works the same as Classic. Set page size, margins, base typography, and document metadata — including automatic metadata detection from your XML's <metadata>/<head>/<front> container and the Map tab's manual field mappings; see Document Metadata & Auto-Detection under Classic's XML Reference for the full breakdown, which applies identically here.

Base Language

Classic 2 adds a Base language setting — the primary script of your document (latin, arabic, or hebrew). This determines the default text direction and which font is active for untagged text.

Typography Features

Each typography role (display, heading, body, etc.) can have OpenType feature settings applied:

Typography & Styles

Style properties work the same as Classic. Classic 2 adds a few additional properties specific to the SVG engine:

Bullet glyphs and list counters each get their own full set of controls too — font, color, size, height reference, a vertical reference point, and a manual H/V-offset with its own unit — exactly as in Classic; see Classic's Bullets & List Counters.

Presets

Works the same as Classic — same built-in citation standards and document structures, same Apply/Page/Styles modes, same full-screen configurator with sliders paired to number fields, the same full-width Advanced Style Editor, and Reset to Default. The one difference: font selection is a direct dropdown of whatever fonts are actually loaded in your project (see SVG Fonts), not a Serif/Sans/Mono category picker — there's no such category for a custom-uploaded glyph font, so intent cards don't change your font choice, only margins, size, and density.

Fonts

Classic 2 ships with two built-in fonts:

• BitFont Latin — covers the full Latin alphabet with ligatures and punctuation.
• BitFont Arabic — covers Arabic, Farsi, and Urdu with correct letter joining and diacritics.

Assigning Fonts

Open the Fonts panel in the sidebar. You can assign a font to each typography role (display, heading, body, caption, label) and to each language slot in the Bilingual panel.

Additional Fonts

Additional fonts can be added to your account. Contact us to request a specific font or script.

Bilingual & RTL

Classic 2 is built for multilingual documents. The Bilingual panel manages language slots and script switching.

Language Slots

Set your primary language (the default script for untagged text) and assign a font to each additional language you use in the document.

Arabic Text

Arabic text is handled automatically — letter joining, ligatures, diacritics, and right-to-left layout are all applied without any extra steps. Farsi and Urdu are also supported.

Inline Language Switching

Mix scripts within a single paragraph using inline tags. The engine detects the direction of each segment automatically:

<paragraph>The word <ar>كتاب</ar> means "book" in Arabic.</paragraph>

Typing RTL Text

• Click an Arabic or Hebrew block in the preview to focus it.
• The cursor moves rightward as you type — towards the visual start of the line.
• Pressing Space inserts a space and the cursor stays at the correct insertion point for the next RTL character.
• Arrow keys respect visual direction: ← moves visually left (higher logical index in Arabic), → moves visually right.
• Backspace deletes the character to the visual left of the cursor.

Header & Footer

Works the same as Classic — Simple and Advanced modes, the same font/size/unit/height-reference/color/alignment controls, and the same layout-mode choice between using the document margin or a custom height. Placeholders: <page> for the page number, {{tag}} for a running title.

For rich, per-tag-styled headers/footers, write a <header>/<footer> XML block with <left>/<center>/<right> zones exactly as in Classic — see Classic's Rich Headers & Footers via XML for the full syntax, including <pagenum/> and multi-line zones.

Headers and footers can be overridden per master page — see Master Pages.

Table of Contents

Works the same as Classic. The TOC is generated from heading tags and inserted before the first page. Choose which tags to include and set the leader character. Entry styling comes from the regular Typography panel (toc_title, toc0, toc1, toc2), and the leader can be given its own independent font/color/size/offset/tracking via Style leader separately — see Classic's Leader Styling.

Footnotes

Use the <fn> tag exactly as in Classic:

<paragraph>This claim is disputed<fn>See Johnson, 2019, p. 42.</fn>.</paragraph>

The FN panel controls font, separator rule, reference style, and line spacing. Works with both LTR and RTL blocks.

Assets

Images

Upload PNG, JPG, or JPEG images and reference them with the <image> tag. Same syntax as Classic.

Fonts

Fonts in Classic 2 are managed in the Fonts panel in the sidebar, not the Assets panel.

Accessibility & Metadata

Works the same as Classic — see Classic's Accessibility & Metadata for the full explanation of how typed values, XML-detected values, and the "Also render in document" toggle relate to each other.

Master Pages

Works the same as Classic — set up through the AI Assistant, used from your XML via <pagebreak master="..."/> or <pagebreak sequence="..."/>. See Classic's Master Pages for the full reference, including master inheritance (extends) and per-master style overrides.

AI Assistant

The AI assistant works the same as Classic and can make all the same document setting changes. In Classic 2 it also understands:

• Typography role feature settings (ligatures, stylistic sets, figure styles)
• Master page definitions, inheritance, per-master style overrides, and master sequences (margins, backgrounds, headers per page type) — see Master Pages
• Language slot assignments

Example prompts

Apply Chicago style 17th edition
Set page to A4 with 25mm margins
Make headings use oldstyle figures
Enable contextual alternates on body text
Create a chapter-opener master page with a 120pt top margin
Set the Arabic font to BitFont Arabic

Export

Classic 2 exports to SVG and PDF. The SVG export is a direct output of the rendering engine. The PDF is generated from the SVG output.

• All fonts are embedded in the export — no external dependencies.
• Arabic, Hebrew, and mixed LTR/RTL documents export correctly.
• What you see in the preview is exactly what exports.

Projects

Save and load projects the same way as Classic — as .json files that store your XML content, style settings, and font assignments. Projects are saved locally and not stored on the server.

XML Reference

Document Root & Metadata

Same rules as Classic: the root element can be named anything, and document metadata (title, author, subject, keywords, date, language) is auto-detected from a <metadata>/<head>/<front> container or mapped manually in the Map tab. See Classic's Document Metadata & Auto-Detection for the full reference — it applies here unchanged.

Standard Block Tags

All Classic block tags work in Classic 2. In addition, Classic 2 recognises language block tags:

Inline Language Tags

Image Tag

<image src="filename.jpg" width="150" height="100" />

Footnote Tag

<paragraph>Text<fn>Footnote.</fn> continues.</paragraph>

Well-formed XML Rules

• Every opening tag must have a closing tag
• Tags must be properly nested — they cannot overlap
• Self-closing tags end with />
• Attribute values must be quoted
• Use & for &, < for <, > for >