A rendition is an alternate copy of a file or an additional file that can be included with an object. For example, it may be a copy of an image in a different format or in a different resolution.

If an object has multiple renditions, Webtop designates one rendition as the primary rendition, which will appear in file lists. You can display all of a file’s renditions by clicking the renditions icon (if your WDK application displays the icon) or through the More>View>Renditions menu in the Streamline view and the View>Renditions menu in the Classic view.

The availability of some renditions and renditions functions are dependant upon which WDK application you are using and other installed products in your Documentum system such as Media Transformation Services and Document Transformation Services. Without the presence of these products, the Renditions functions may appear in Webtop but will not be available. For example, Media Transformation Services generates Thumbnail and Low Resolution renditions of image objects upon Import of the original object. Other rendition types may be generated for other objects depending on their format. If Media Transformation Services has not been installed and/or configured for your repository, these extra renditions will not be generated. Renditions are generated for one item at a time and are processed asynchronously, meaning that renditions might not be immediately available after import. You can also create new renditions using Media Transformation Services’ Transformation capabilities. See Working with transformations for more information on Transformations.

Another Documentum product that rendition functionality depends on is Document Transformation Services. For example, an author could import a Microsoft Word file called Sales.doc, and then the author could generate an HTML rendition of the file (using Document Transformation Services) called Sales.htm. Both files would contain the same content but in different formats.

You can create renditions outside the repository and import them in, or you can generate renditions within Webtop.

You can generate new renditions of the same file format. To differentiate the multiple renditions of a file in the same file format, each rendition must be given a description during creation, in the Rendition Description field.

When a file is versioned, its renditions, including any thumbnail renditions, are not carried forward with the new version of the file automatically. If you create a new version of the object, the renditions remain with the previous version. However, Webtop may automatically generate new renditions when you check in and version a file if it was selected during rendition creation. See Transformations overview for more information on automatically updating a rendition upon versioning.

You can configure lifecycles to automatically generate a PDF rendition at each lifecycle state. See your WDK-based administration guide for more details.