Adding variables

[jaime_ash@adobeforums.com]

Does anyone know of a way to add variables to an InDesign document or a plug-in that would add variables -- like FrameMaker's variables?

[Stu_Bloom@adobeforums.com]

Not in the base product. There may be a plug-in.

[David_Earls@adobeforums.com]

Try Em Software's InData plug-in. It gives you all the typographic controls of InDesign. You can make everything variable, including graphics.

Last week we generated almost 52,000 pages of completely variable text in about four hours on two pcs. This involved over 2.6 million fields of data from a 13,000-record database with 204 fields per record. We created these pages in a total of 130 documents averaging about 400 pages each. Every single word, phrase, sentence, paragraph and section on every page was included or excluded based on the individual data record. In our book, that makes it "industrial strength".

Not too shabby when you consider this usage is the "royal we".

[jaime_ash@adobeforums.com]

In FrameMaker a variable is a place holder for a text string. FrameMaker has two types of variables: system variables and user variables. A user variable can be anything that you as the user creaete and update as needed: For example, you could define a product name variable using a code name and later change it to the final name. System variables are things like the current date, the file name of the document, the page count, the text of a paragraph (that you might want to appear in a header or footer, for example.)

I'm looking to add that same functionality to InDesign.

[Steve_Werner@adobeforums.com]

That feature isn't part of InDesign. I have never heard an a plug-in that offered that feature, though perhaps there is such a beast. Scripting might offer the best answer. You might ask in the InDesign Scripting Forum.

FrameMaker users are invariably disappointed that InDesign doesn't have the structured long document features that they're used to. They expect things like footnotes and endnotes, anchored objects, variables, and so on.

But InDesign was programmed to initially compete against QuarkXPress and PageMaker for much different kind of documents, and for users with different needs. Gradually, I expect, those long document features will be added but probably over many versions.

I attended the InDesign Conference in Boston recently. At one of the sessions, Adobe product managers solicited feature requests from the audience. It was noteworthy that there were NO LONG DOCUMENT FEATURES REQUESTED by any of the attendees!

[Dave_Saunders@adobeforums.com]

Steve,

Perhaps the long document people knew that they wouldn't be interested so didn't attend. Catering to the current base will make the current base happy but won't necessarily build market penetration as fast as looking in other directions. Add to this the announced demise of the Mac version of FrameMaker and one would hope that Adobe is also looking in that direction, too.

Dave

[Steve_Werner@adobeforums.com]

I also hope Adobe is heading in that direction. I would hope for at least a couple of new long document features in the next version.

[Stu_Bloom@adobeforums.com]

I would think the long document market could be huge if Adobe were to release a solid version of ID with the right feature set and market it effectively. There are tons of business users who create manuals and complex reports who would love to escape the limitations of Word but really have nowhere to turn. Framemaker and Ventura can do the job, but neither has ever been marketed to this crowd in any real fashion, and they both have the reputation of being difficult to use. I tried to get Framemaker into a client for a large set of documents that it would have been perfect for, but was unsuccessful, mainly because it wasn't considered a "mainstream" application. As a result, the client spent more money and more time creating the documents and wound up with a much less pleasing result.

What would be a real killer app would be a version of ID that not only had the features but that also could import Word documents with fields, footnotes, cross-references, etc. intact. Some nifty templates and a set of keyboard definitions that matched Word's would help a lot, too.

[Dominic_Hurley@adobeforums.com]

At one of the sessions, Adobe product managers solicited feature requests from the audience. It was noteworthy that there were NO LONG DOCUMENT FEATURES REQUESTED by any of the attendees!

But what was the session - how to publish magazines with ID? No matter, I tend to agree with Dave that because ID doesn't meet many of the needs of those working with long documents, they may not have turned up to the conference in the first place. But if ID's product managers were to ask in the FM Mac forum what features ID needs, they'd get a ton of responses!

[David_Earls@adobeforums.com]

Whatever happened to the plug-in approach?

I don't personally need long-document features. But I do need database publishing. So I bought a database publishing plug-in, and it cost me a lot more than if that capability had been built into the InDesign application. But not everybody needs that capability, so Adobe didn't build it in, and that's OK.

I propose that if the long-document market is so huge, then the invisible hand would be putting somebody out there to make a long-document plug-in.

There is an entropy side of Moore's Law. It's called application bloat. It takes me longer to make a pdf with Acrobat Professional on an AMD Athlon 3000+ running at 2.167 MhZ with 1GB RAM than it took Acrobat 4 to make a pdf on an Athlon XP running at 1MhZ with 512 GB RAM. With all the new gee-whiz stuff Acrobat Pro does, it's slowed down doing what it was originally designed to do.

[Dominic_Hurley@adobeforums.com]

Whatever happened to the plug-in approach?

Nothing - it's still there, but some of us would like to buy a program that did what we need straight out of the box, without having to continually update plugins every time the progam is updated. (That's assuming that you can buy a plugin.) But I do agree with you that I don't think the market is that great for a long-document program that offers high-quality typography. However, some of what the long-document market requires do feature quite often in requests in these pages (footnotes, cross-references, variables, autonumbering, bullets, etc), and I don't think it's unreasonable to request these.

[Stu_Bloom@adobeforums.com]

If you need those features and don't need the high-quality typography, why not just use Word? Or, even better (because it's easier to place graphics where you want them), WordPerfect?

[Guy_Smiley@adobeforums.com]

[email]Stu_Bloom@adobeforums.com[/email] wrote in
news:3bb51bf0.10@webx.la2eafNXanI:

> If you need those features and don't need the high-quality
> typography, why not just use Word?

Some of us--and I think Dominic is one--want those features *and* high-
quality typography.

[Stu_Bloom@adobeforums.com]

Okay - I read his message in a hurry and missed the point of it.

[David_Earls@adobeforums.com]

>but some of us would like to buy a program that did what we need straight

out of the box, without having to continually update plugins every time
the progam is updated.




OK, I've faithfully upgraded my database publishing plug-in every time Adobe has changed InDesign. When IDCS was released, we had to wait several months before the plug-in updated, so we had to run several months of work in ID2 when IDCS was out, and installed on our machines. I suppose we could be unhappy over those months, but IDCS and the new generation of the plugin are so terrific that those months don't matter.

>some of what the long-document market requires do feature quite often

in requests in these pages (footnotes, cross-references, variables, autonumbering,
bullets, etc), and I don't think it's unreasonable to request these.




You're absolutely right. It's not unreasonable to request these. And it doesn't cost anything either. Neither is it reasonable to respond to them simply because somebody asked for them. And never is it free.

That said, I acknowledge that Dom is a regular and major contributor contributor to this forum, and I have nothing but respect for his posts.

[Dominic_Hurley@adobeforums.com]

You're too kind.

Actually, while ideally I want native long-document features in ID, I'd be happy enough if there were a plugin available that added them - preferably something akin to Quark XPress's AutoPage. Sadly, no one's stepped up to the plate yet.

[Tony_Stuart@adobeforums.com]

Steve

One of the galling things I have to do with InDesign documents is to constantly search for 'page space' to ensure that cross-references such as '(see the table on page 13)' remain correct.

Is this a long document feature? Not necessarily: it could be helpful in 16-page booklet. As could handling figure numbers that may change during production.

I suppose that it is my lengthy book publishing background, which well and truly began before DTP, that makes me wonder why Adobe and Quark just can't get their heads around just what people who produce publications do each and every day. We can't give you equations because they are too technical and, anyway, they are a long-document feature. Nonsense. I work for a government outfit that frequently includes simple word equations in leaflets, and I have to fake them every time. This is called basic book publishing, not advanced calculus. Using another 'long-document' program (not FrameMaker!) I have often added a table to a one-page letter years before tables were even offered by Adobe and Quark.

I suggest that Adobe send its programmers out to smell the roses. And, I suggest, those Indesign conference attendees you mentioned were exclusively those who produce 'documents of different kinds'. Those who produce publications of only modest technical complexity, such as me, were probably back in the office sweating manually over things that should be automated in InDesign.

Fancy Adobe being satisfied with matching QuarkXPress's and PageMaker's limited features. What a towering achievement.