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“Typography is two-dimensional architecture, based on experience and imagination, and guided by rules and readability. And this is the purpose of typography: The arrangement of design elements within a given structure should allow the reader to easily focus on the message, without slowing down the speed of his reading.”
—Hermann Zapf

 

December 2024 21 Saturday

 

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Database to InDesign

Avoid data re-entry and manual intervention/formatting.

Files or database exports in CSV, Excel, SQL, or XML format can be natively used or automatically filtered for use in InDesign.

A representative project—course titles and descriptions were provided in Word (.doc / .docx) files and tabular data as Excel (.xls / .xlsx) files. One Excel file listed the course names with the course codes, costs, credits, etc. A small Perl script merged tabular data with the titles/descriptions by course code and exported data for InDesign and HTML.

The script returned an InDesign-suitable input file with styles assigned ready for immediate layout/pagination. Files are placed (Ctrl-D) the file[s] in an InDesign text box—the titles display as styled titles, the descriptions display as styled descriptions, and the tables appear as styled tables with no manual intervention. No elements need to be selected/styled by hand.

It is also possible to connect InDesign with a database so that a query could be run immediately before printing, so that the data is current.

InDesign templates can be built to correspond to data stored in SQL Server databases. This approach is excellent for catalogs, directories, or other lists of organized data that needs to be formatted consistently and automatically. When you are ready to commit to print, a fresh query can be run to ensure latest possible data before printing.