Data Merge Wishlist?

[ClubleyM]

Hi

I wonder if anybody has discovered a feature, or if they know of any future plans to include a date merge feature to Designer?

I currently design labels for customers for products that require ingredients and/or health and safety information. If that information changes, I then have to go through each design and change the information. However, if that information was pulled in from a database/spreadsheet or something similar it would help no end!!

Maybe something for a wishlist ?

Comments gratefully received. Not planning to go outside of Xara if I can help it. Thank you.

[mwenz]

Don't know what version or actual Xara application you use.

Have you tried having one master label, say in the upper left, then make all the others live copies? You only have to make a single edit, the others update automatically.

I do almost every merge in other applications--they are more extensive. However, I do one set of food labeling in XDP. It's a jar, product label on the front and nutritional label on the backside. The live copy works for me in this instance.

Mike

[gwpriester]

Welcome to TalkGraphics. I'm going to move this thread to the Dear Xara forum which is better for feature requests.

[Acorn]

Do you have any experience with JSON and Ajax?
Acorn

[mwenz]

Acorn, this ain't about web stuff.

[Acorn]

Acorn, this ain't about web stuff.

JSON is a mechanism to store structured data, "...a database/spreadsheet or something similar...". It can be used on a local filestore.
Equally, Ajax can take this data and put it into a Placeholder (crude) or with some jQuery replace the contents of a named ID.

As far as I know the Xara engine doesn't care about how the objects are created, it is only the final out that matters.
The closest analogy I can think of in the document domain is page numbering, limited from Xara, but with CSS styling, jQuery and a few other tricks I can achieve Chapter, Section, Page references to my own rules.

I also tried to keep the approach to within the bounds of Xara alone.

A CMS would do the same job and probably better.
I could throw something together with Wordpress (but that's webbie).

I have used a post processor, hand-coded REBOL to copy a Xara page and replace named text areas with live data.

Where there's a tool, try it.

Acorn