BI Publisher CSS Stylesheets

The Stationery Editor may be used to render documents in HTML format for emailing (for example, for emailed confirmation letters) and display in the recipient's browser. In most cases, the format styles passed from the RTF template into XSL-FO formatting create HTML tags that faithfully mimic the Word original. However, depending on the BI Publisher version being used, a few style tags may not be passed into the final HTML. These tags include:

a:link{color:blue}
a:visited{color:red}
a:hover{color:yellow}
a:active{color:green}
img{border:0px}

In order to overcome this situation, "global" style sheets may be used to specify these (and potentially other) style characteristics. The global stylesheets are of two types:

Global stylesheets that are specific to the report being generated, and
A default global stylesheet for application when no report-specific stylesheet is available.

Report-specific global stylesheets are named for the report to which they apply, with a .css extension (for example, the stylesheet for the sample_guest_confirmation report would be sample_guest_confirmation.css). Once the report-specific stylesheet is created, it is copied into the webhtml folder on the application server.

The webhtml folder also includes the Sample_OPERAXMLP.css stylesheet, which contains the tags described above. When the property wishes to use stylesheets, Sample_OPERAXMLP.css stylesheet may be copied, modified, and renamed to OPERAXMLP.css. This stylesheet is automatically applied when no report-specific stylesheet is available for the report being rendered as HTML.

After the OPERAXMLP servlet (which creates the HTML output) converts BI generated styles into inline HTML style tags, it retrieves and embeds the global styles defined in the report-specific stylesheet in the <style> section within the HTML output file <head>. If no report-specific stylesheet is found in the webhtml folder, the OPERAXMLP.css stylesheet is used.

Either or both types of global stylesheets may be further customized to include additional style tags beyond the anchor and image style tags described above. Note, however, that the inline tags embedded in the HTML output by BI Publisher are not overridden by any style specifications of the embedded global stylesheet.

Note: The global stylesheets may not function with all email clients. Some email clients, such as gmail, strip off references to embedded stylesheets and referenced stylesheets and keep only inline style tags.