Version 5.7.11

# How-to guides

While the manual explains the concepts and the reference is there for looking things up, the how-to guides lead to a finished result: each recipe solves a concrete task from practice, with a runnable layout and data to reproduce it.

The recipes contain more than step-by-step instructions; they also carry the decision knowledge behind them. Every recipe follows the same structure:

- Task: what is to be created, with a picture of the goal.
- Decision: which approaches exist and how to recognize the right one.
- Solution: the way to the result, step by step.
- Limits: when this approach no longer works and what to do then.

All recipes use the same fictional data set: the article data of “Confixa”, an invented manufacturer of fastening technology (screws, wall plugs, anchors). The data is introduced in the first recipe and grows with the tasks.

## Decision guides

Two questions come up in every project, even before the first recipe is used:

Data preparation
Transform up front or process in the layout?
Table, groups or text flow?
The central presentation decision

## Tables

Simple table with automatic breaking
Article list with a repeating table head across pages
Controlling column widths
Fixed widths, star widths and mixed forms
Continuation head and continuation note
Varying head and foot per page
Breaking complex tables manually
Portioning and measuring for continuation pages with custom logic

## Page scaffold

Basic structure of a data sheet
Page type with head, foot and type area, millimeter-exact

## Directories

Table of contents
Collecting page numbers and outputting them in the next run
Keyword index
Sorting and grouping with Makeindex, merging page numbers

More recipes will follow.

#### On this page