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How can I automate production of many documents with same template but different key/table-value content?
Subject:How can I automate production of many documents with same template but different key/table-value content? From:Dan Richards <danrrich -at- gmail -dot- com> To:techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com Date:Wed, 23 Apr 2014 18:29:32 -0700
Hi, I need to create 1000s of multi-page PDF documents which require the
typical header/footer/pagination/wrapping of text/etc. and each of which
(aside from static text) has 0-10 tables (of fixed types--i.e. the column
headers are pre-specified, but the number of rows/specific content varies
for each document), as well as ~30 different label-value pairs that need to
be substituted in predefined locations (some label values are a paragraph
of text, but others are single words). I need to give the tables a nice
visual design and have rendering the table automatically handle wrapping
values in columns automatically.
What tool would you recommend using to create a template to specify the
layout of these elements to indicate where each label or table should be
placed? Preferably specify some basic conditional logic control over
whether to show a section/table based on whether content exists for it for
that document, to put the logic in one document template rather than have
multiple document templates for the different possible combinations.
What tool or process would you recommend to substitute in the specific
label-values and tables values for each document into the template and
render to PDF?
I've never needed to do something at this scale where I need automation, so
any advice would be appreciated. I'm not sure if there may be a means to
script something like Framemaker to automate this (applying appropriate
template and label-value and table-values content files for each document
to render to PDF) or is there some modern approach for producing
high-quality paginated documents from a template but substituting variable
key-value and table-value content may be better?
D
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