[Miniryu]

Alright, I just found a copy of both QuarkExpress 4.0 and FileMaker Pro 4.0 on a backup disk my dad made for his old-school G3. They are now installed on my iMac, but I can't find any of the user manual or instructions. I don't know much about Desktop Publishing; exactly how are these applications used?

[godzookie2k]

Quark is the industry standard tool for laying out print work. You don't draw in it, or create any imagery (except for beautiful layouts right guys?? ) essentially Quark takes all the parts of the design process and brings them together.

Filemaker Pro, as a designer, I have never touched or even thought about touching in my entire career. Its a database application, a lot like excel and... well thats all i know. Useful for spreadsheets and payrolls.

as for how to use them? Uhm, shi+. go to school for that.

Nick

[MikeM32]

Filemaker Pro, as a designer, I have never touched or even thought about touching in my entire career. Its a database application, a lot like excel and... well thats all i know. Useful for spreadsheets and payrolls.

Right you are about Quark godzookie2k. You can do some minor drawing in Quark but it's not really meant for real illustration, just for doing great page layout and typography.

The funny thing about FileMaker is that at my former job we actually did utilize FileMaker and a Quark to automatically "create" certain kinds of generic forms we'd always do from season to season. These forms would contain literally thousands of items with accompanying prices, barcodes, UPC numbers (etc., etc.). The thing was the clients (Clinique, Estee Lauder, Bobbi Brown to name a few) wouldn't change thier entire product line from winter to spring. So keeping the majority of that data on file would be essentially the same as the last time we printed it.

Since they never changed the over-all "basic look" of thier order-forms (which they use in stores like Macy's) we could lay out all the graphic elements (templates) one time. The subsequent times we'd only really have to add and/or remove certain products from the database and then "re-merge" all the data back into the templates again. They had this XTension (which cost like 2 grand, and I did the research to find for them ) to merge data into Quark templates from exported text files which we stored in FileMaker databases.

Because setting all that text woulda just sucked Plus the press-runs on those jobs weren't so big, and the clients were always bitching about having to pay so much more for typesetting time prior to them acquiring that XTension.

Mike

[MikeM32]

[just noticed duplicate post after god knows how long......ooops!!!]

[ 01-11-2002: Message edited by: MikeM32 ]

[vsurfer]

Originally posted by MikeM32:
<STRONG> I did the research to find for them ) to merge data into Quark templates from exported text files which we stored in FileMaker databases.

Because setting all that text woulda just sucked Plus the press-runs on those jobs weren't so big, and the clients were always bitching about having to pay so much more for typesetting time prior to them acquiring that XTension.</STRONG>

Yes indeed. Filemaker is a wonderful aid for automating layout of scads upon scads of database information fields in Quark Xpress. It's widely used in publishing houses (by folk like myself) to speed the creation of catalogs.

Basically filemaker database information is exported along with style tag handles (eg @aTitle: @bAuthorCredit @cIllustrator @mdata: etc, etc. The tags can be set to whatever style you wish in a Quark document template.

When the data is imported it is then automatically and immediately formatted according to the syle set for that field on import. After that changing styles globally to suit marketing and graphic design considerations is deliciously expeditious.

I'd say that Filemaker is fabulously intuitive and amazingly capable guerilla database, but when it comes to the advanced stuff, there's often not much of a substitute for reading the manuals, taking classes, and/or spending hours looking under the hood of a database that's heavily scripted to see how certain things work.

[vsurfer]

Originally posted by Miniryu:
<STRONG>Alright, I just found a copy of both QuarkExpress 4.0 and FileMaker Pro 4.0 on a backup disk my dad made for his old-school G3. They are now installed on my iMac, but I can't find any of the user manual or instructions. I don't know much about Desktop Publishing; exactly how are these applications used? </STRONG>

Oh by the way you are a lucky dude!

[registered_user]

Originally posted by vsurfer:
<STRONG>

Yes indeed. Filemaker is a wonderful aid for automating layout of scads upon scads of database information fields in Quark Xpress. It's widely used in publishing houses (by folk like myself) to speed the creation of catalogs.

Basically filemaker database information is exported along with style tag handles (eg @aTitle: @bAuthorCredit @cIllustrator @mdata: etc, etc. The tags can be set to whatever style you wish in a Quark document template.</STRONG>

Oh, please, please, please tell me that you can link to a more in-depth tutorial or perhaps offer one. I have been wondering about how to do this for years! And, I'd use the technique every quarter.... please, please, please!

[bluedog]

Originally posted by registered_user:
<STRONG>

Oh, please, please, please tell me that you can link to a more in-depth tutorial or perhaps offer one. I have been wondering about how to do this for years! And, I'd use the technique every quarter.... please, please, please!</STRONG>

Open "Script Editor" the free applescript editor provided by Apple. Then select OPEN-&gt;Dictionary and select the QuarkXPress application. It will show you the commands and references to what you can connect to in QuarkXPress. It is hightly applescriptable. There are many products that use these hooks to link other data in.

I did a rough, import data from a filemaker database by hand about 5 years ago. I don't remember exactly where I found the info to do it, but its not TOO difficult if you've done programming before.

If you have a limited or single-use application, then I think you can get by with doing it by reading the applescript documentation or going to scriptweb. http://www.scriptweb.org/

Good luck, otherwise look for third-party solutions at the quark site.