QuarkXclusive help

August 15, 2005 9:22 AM

QuarkXclusive (variable data publishing)-- does anyone know of a good tutorial or guide? The offical documentation is longer than Ulysses and harder to understand. Alternately, does anyone know a different extension that does similar tasks but is easier to master/not linked to HP stuff? Or an InDesign plugin that is similar?
posted by Mayor Curley to computers & internet (5 comments total)

Corel Ventura comes with a kickass database publisher and a decent XML conversion front-end.

It's also a far better application than Quark. Framemaker and Ventura are still the only worthwhile structured long-document layout tools.
posted by five fresh fish at 11:45 AM on August 15, 2005

Have a look at LinkUp which links QXD to databases. I'm currently contracting at a ginormous financial institution -- in the dept. that produces fund reports -- & we start with Excel spreadsheets from the fund accountants which get processed into FileMaker, then SQL & then into QXD via the LinkUp XTension.

I'm the QXD specialist of the dept. so not best-placed to advise on the database side but it seems to work well once it's all set up.

What kind of data are you publishing?
posted by i_cola at 12:36 PM on August 15, 2005

It's basically personalized names and addresses-- as in, posters with variable contact info on them. No replacing of images or anything.
posted by Mayor Curley at 1:08 PM on August 15, 2005

QuarkXclusive (aka Yours Truly Designer) is extremely user-friendly; I worked in variable data programming for nearly 4 years and found it incredibly easy and effective to use.

My first suggestion is to ignore any and all Adobe support and go straight to HP Indigo with your questions, if that's possible under your current license. My second suggestion is to find a real live person (a consultant) to teach it to you; it should take a day or two at most. You're close to HP's Worcester, Mass. headquarters. If that doesn't appeal, the Indigo Customer Exchange (ICE) mailing list is a great way to find local designers or printers who could send somebody over for the day. I'd also be more than happy to answer any questions I can -- email's in profile.

I heard some good things about DesignMerge, if you want to explore in that direction. PlanetPress is becoming a player in the field, though you're limited to their crappy, proprietary, Windows-only design environment. If I knew what kind of documents you're trying to create (sexy VDP brochures, standard invoices, mailing envelopes, etc) I could probably dig up a few other possibilities. This article explores a few in-depth.

Last time I talked to the people at HP, R&D had "elevated" YTD integration with InDesign to a high priority, but I never got a timetable. I left the industry a couple of months ago, but had yet to hear about a solid VDP product for InDesign.
posted by junkbox at 1:10 PM on August 15, 2005

I've done a lot of work with DesignMerge (in fact, I used to do business with Meadows) and wouldn't hesitate to recommend it. It's not cheap, though.
posted by bobot at 1:23 PM on August 15, 2005