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David asked about a way to keep hundreds of labels up to date.
One trick that can help is to keep all of the labels in a SINGLE
Illustrator file. That works especially well if the symbols appear in
standard locations. Keep each symbol and each block of text on its own
layer.
The challenge is to create a system to hide/unhide the correct set of
layers for each label. Illustrator doesn't have layer groups like
Photoshop does, so it's tough, but I've seen some brilliant naming and
annotation systems. It helps to save a copy of the "output" version of the
file for each label; just be sure to always edit the master file.
InDesign has some layer group plugins which might be helpful, but I haven't
tried any of them. There exist some "symbol replacement" scripts for
Illustrator, which I also haven't tried (try searching for 'adobe
illustrator "replace an object" ').
Paul
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Paul Goble
Omaha, Nebraska
pgcommunication -at- gmail -dot- com
www.pgcommunication.com
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