CatBase
makes it easy to publish your catalogue using InDesign. It does all
the hard, boring work for you! This example uses the Xtags plugin for InDesign to facilitate the automatic placement of images in the InDesign document. The process, in a nutshell, goes like
this:
- Get your
data into the CatBase database. You can either enter it manually, import
a delimited text file, or (Data
Chameleon Edition) retrieve it from a MySql or ODBC-compliant database
or spreadsheet (such as Microsoft SqlServer, Access, etc.)
- Set up
Style Sheets in CatBase. These tell CatBase what data you want to publish
and how you want it sorted and formatted. You can have any number of
Style Sheets, so you can publish your data in lots of different ways
(and to various publishing destinations).
- Select
the records you want to publish.
- Export
the data to a text file, using one of your Style Sheets.
- Import
that text file into your inDesign template. All the text is - magically
- formatted exactly as you want it to be, even with pictures included
if appropriate!
OK then, let's
see just how easy it is!
Click here to see a brief video showing how easy it is to publish a catalog with CatBase.
For the
purposes of this Tutorial, we are using the Demo Database that is supplied
with the CatBase Demo. If you would like to follow along and try it
for yourself, you can download the fully-functional Demo from here.
Publish a Catalogue
with Pictures
For this example we are going to create a catalog that
shows photographs offered for sale by our fictitious stock photo agency,
Castlephotos. The photos are organised into Categories; the Categories
are sorted in alphabetical order with the appropriate photos listed
under each one, also sorted alphabetically by name. For
each picture we will include the following data:
- The picture name
- The picture itself
- A description
- The name of the photographer
- Prices
We'll start by showing you how easy it is to publish the catalogue once the style sheets have been set up, and then we will briefly look at how those style sheets were created.
Note: You must have the Xtags Plugin
installed in the Plug-Ins folder in your InDesign folder. We have included
a demo version of Xtags with our demo (you'll find it in the 3rd Party
Demos folder).
Publishing the Catalog
We've set up a Publishing Project called Picture Catalogue - InDesign. To publish the catalog, click on the Publish Data button on the main window and choose Picture Catalog - InDesign from the pop-up menu:
CatBase publishes the data and saves it into a file called catalog.xtg, which you'll find in a folder called Data Exports on your Desktop. Move this file form the Data Exports folder into your CatBase folder (if you don;t, it will not be able to find the pictures when it is placed in your InDesign document).
Open up your InDesign template, or create
a new document. We have included a simple template in the Goodies folder
with the CatBase demo. If you create a new document, you MUST save it
first, otherwise the pictures may not import.
We have set up the Demo with relative path
names for all the pictures. They are all in a folder called Pictures,
which is in the CatBase folder. In order for the pictures to import
correctly, your InDesign document must also be in the CatBase folder.
Now for the fun part ...
- With your InDesign document open, make sure that the insertion
point is in the first text box.
- Choose Get Text with Xtags ... from the File menu (if it isn't there, that means you haven't installed Xtags in your
InDesign Plugins folder!)
- Select the file you just created (catalog.xtg).
- Make sure that the Include style sheets check
box is checked
- Click on the Open button
Watch in amazement as the catalogue is created before
your very eyes! It should look like this:
 |
"Animals" is the top-level Category
"Bears" is a sub-category.
The product information consists of:
- Picture name
- The picture itself
- A description
- The photographer's name
- Pricing information
... and it was all formatted automatically! |
It
really is that simple!
Now let's look at how this works ...
Publishing Style Sheet
Publishing Style Sheets tell CatBase:
- What data to publish
- How to sort it
- How to format it
The Publishing Style Sheet we are using for this project
is called Picture Catalogue by Category (to view or edit Publishing
Style Sheets, click on the Style Sheets button on the main window and choose Publishing Style Sheets). It looks like this:
Note that the Default Publishing Destination is QuarkXPress. No problem - we can simply select a different Publishing Destination (InDesign) when we publish the data.
To specify the formatting of the Category headings,
click on the Category Settings tab (in our example, we've chosen
to use pictures for the headings):
Back on the Paragraphs page ... perhaps the most important thing
here is the list of Paragraphs. This is where we specify exactly what
data is going to be published and how it will be formatted. For example,
the first paragraph will be the picture name, and it will be formatted
using a style sheet called "Name". Paragraphs can contain
any number of elements; there are seven element types:
- Data from a field in the database (Picture Name, for
example)
- Static text (such as "Price, framed: ")
- A formula. Formulas are a very versatile tool which
enable you to tell CatBase how to make decisions about what to include
- or leave out - and optionally, how to format it.
- Punctuation (such as a tab character)
- A calculation (for example, you could discount all
prices by 15% for a sale catalogue)
- A picture
- A relation (relations enable you to include information
from a related table. In our example, the Pictures table is related
to the Photographers table so when we are publishing Pictures, we can
easily include information about the photographer who owns each picture).
Elements are the building blocks of paragraphs.
A quick look at the Prices paragraph (double-click
on it in the list of Paragraphs) shows us that it is comprised of four
elements:
The detailed workings of Publishing Style
Sheets are covered in a separate Tutorial.
You are now ready to publish your catalog. There are two ways to do this:
- Select the records you want to publish and then select the Publishing Style Sheet to use (chose this method when you want to publish a particular selection of records - for example, one specific category)
- Set up a Publishing Project to simplify the publishing job (select this option if you want to publish using the same set of data each time)
We will look at using Option 2 - a Publishing Project.
Create a Set of data
Sets are pre-defined selections of records. A set can be as simple as all records in the table, or it can be more dynamic - for example, "all companies in the USA" or "All products priced less than $20" or any other criteria you like.
Set up a Publishing Project
Publishing Projects tell CatBase which Set of data to publish, which Publishing Style Sheet to use, which Publishing Destination it's for, and where to save the published file. This is the one we've set up for this Tutorial:
Publish the data!
Now all you need to do is publish your data, as described at the beginning of this Tutorial
Publishing Destinations
In addition to publishing with InDesign, CatBase can publish to a variety of publishing destinations:
- QuarkXPress
- FrameMaker
- XMl files
- HTML files
- Delimited text files
- PageMaker
- Word processors, such as Microsoft Word
- ODBC-compliant data sources such as MySql, Microsoft Sql Server, etc. (Data Chameleon Edition)
What do do next ...
