Data merge, placeholder for text read from external fie

[Ampa]

I am laying out cards for a game, and have a spreadsheet of values (suit, rank, description, flavour text) - I want to put a placeholder into the design that retrieves the correct information from the external file and inserts it into the Xara file.

InDesign calls this a Data Merge.
Word might refer to this as a Data Field or a Mail Merge.

Is there anything like this in Xara?

Can anyone think of a clever work around that would achieve the same sort of thing?

Thanks

[gwpriester]

Are you thinking of this for a website or for print?

[Ampa]

Print.

It is an example of a document where the layout is fixed but some or all of the data is variable.

I guess the workflow would be something like...

1. Design layout
2. Point at datasource
3. Generate documents (or better yet, generate "Data Copies" <- my terminology. Would be like a live copy, but with unique data!)

In a perfect world it might even be possible to specify attributes such as colour, font face in data and have the object created on the fly.

[mwenz]

If you have InDesign, then export the cards as a high-res TIF, an AI or EPS file, and reference the unique file names for the card in the merge file. Same with PagePlus if you have it, but use an image type instead of vector (though AI should work, I haven't used it in PP). Set up your page size for the card size. If you do not need to merge the card design, you can use Word or LibreOffice (LO is free).

Mike

[Michael]

Scribus to the rescue!
Scribus is an open source DTP program and can easily be compared with InDesign or Quark (where did Quark go?)

Download Scribus from www.scribus.net and tha generator script from http://www.ekkehardwill.de/sg/. With thme you can import ypur Xara exported document in Scribus and merge predefined data on that.

[Ampa]

Thanks for the input - I shall certainly take a look at some of these options, though it would be nice to have a way of doing this natively in Xara.

I notice that there is a Xara web-widget that will import a CSV file and display the contents as a table, plus there are already placeholders that will insert Flash files, or chunks of HTML, so it really seems that all the required tech is there built into the current version - it just needs a little remix to allow the extra flexibility that true Data Mergin would offer.

[Acorn]

I am laying out cards for a game, and have a spreadsheet of values (suit, rank, description, flavour text) - I want to put a placeholder into the design that retrieves the correct information from the external file and inserts it into the Xara file.

InDesign calls this a Data Merge.
Word might refer to this as a Data Field or a Mail Merge.

Is there anything like this in Xara?

Can anyone think of a clever work around that would achieve the same sort of thing?

Thanks

Say you have 20 rows of data. Are you wanting to have 20 pages, each showing a different row's worth?
A solution might involve using jQuery, AJAX and JSON to populate the placeholder on each page.
It's very similar to a Content Management System.
Acorn

[richinri]

Acorn to the rescue!

[Michael]

Acorn to the rescue!

Such a pity Xara Designer is so tightly locked into the Windows environment. Maybe it's time to revive Xara LX so it can be ported to different platforms

[Ampa]

Say you have 20 rows of data. Are you wanting to have 20 pages, each showing a different row's worth?
A solution might involve using jQuery, AJAX and JSON to populate the placeholder on each page.
It's very similar to a Content Management System.
Acorn

Interesting... there is definitely potential here.

Thanks for the pointer.