InCatalog 6

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InCatalog, a plug-in for Adobe InDesign, is a powerful bi-directional linking tool for creating transparent links between your Adobe InDesign documents and external data.

With these links in place, you will never have to enter or update your information in two places (documents and database), instead you can simply update one or the other from the most current version.

Version control can be such a headache
Does your document reflect the latest info and prices in your database? Does your data reflect last-minute changes you`ve made to your document? If you use InCatalog, you know it does.

Fully bi-directional
Once links are established with the the easy-to-use linking tool, changes can be made either in the document or the database, and the changes pushed in the other direction with no extra work. (No intermediate steps such as report creation and extraction are needed.)

Imposes no layout or design constraints
InCatalog`s links are invisible to your printed layout (but visible while you`re working). Linked elements can be moved between documents freely without loss of linkage.

Applications
You can use InCatalog to update prices, graphics, or product information--even change versions or swap languages--automatically. If you have different pricing regions, use InCatalog to swap the prices in for each region--automatically.

Pro vs. non-Pro
InCatalog Pro is the ODBC-capable version of InCatalog and can update documents directly from and to ODBC-accessible databases such as Oracle, SQL Server, Sybase, Access, etc.

Here are some key features of "InCatalog Pro":

· Flexible data sources and destinations
Use off-line simple ascii delimited data "snapshot" files, on-line FileMaker Pro (and Runtime) databases under Mac OS, and on-line SQL databases such as Oracle, SQL Server, and Access, using ODBC under Mac OS and Windows (Pro version only).

· Transparent data linking
Use InCatalog`s intuitive linking palette to establish links between any database element and any document text element--from a single character to a phrase to a paragraph to a whole story--or any picture element. Links are transparent to the printing process (they don`t affect page layout), but visible on the screen (if you choose) so you can see what you`re doing. Links are also moveable between documents and libraries transparently, for ease of building new documents from old document elements with links intact.

· Interactive updating
Use the linking palette`s interactive update capability to update the current single link, whole frames/stories, whole groups, or the current spread.

· Semi-automatic building techniques
With pre-linked modules in libraries, drag a module, fill in a key value in one link, and watch InCatalog fill in the whole module interactively.

· One-step batch updating
With just one menu selection (Update Document... or Update Data...), you`ve just made sure all linked document elements match their corresponding database elements. Don`t ever worry again about whether you`ve gotten all the price changes before the big catalog release, or whether, in the last-minute rush to get the catalog out the door, you`ve forgotten to update a few prices in the database that you updated in the document.

· Work with multiple documents and data sources/destinations
Use multiple open documents and use multiple data sources and destinations for complex jobs, even per-document, switching among them at will.

· Price styles
Define any number of price styles per publishing project using full tagged text for arbitrary formatting, and apply styles per-link.

· Key linking options
Select different strategies for obtaining a link`s key field value: direct in the link, direct from the linked document contents, indirect from the current group, or indirect from text before or after the current link. With grouping and indirect keys, build whole modules that require only one key to be set to fully link everything in the module, or build lines or paragraphs of multiple links that are controlled from a single item.

· Tagged text support
Enable tagged text support for any given link, to capture the full InDesign Tags document formatting of any data element.

· Picture placement options
Update pictures, automatically resizing them to fit their destination frame in various ways, or to be left sized as-is.

· Picture search
Direct InCatalog to your picture folders, using aliases/shortcuts in your project control folder. Enable "fuzzy lookup," which even finds picture files with filename prefixes or file types/suffixes.

· Scriptable
Script all of InCatalog`s updating operations under Mac OS or Windows for powerful workflow automation.

· Full Unicode support
InCatalog can read and write the full Unicode character set (that InDesign supports), in various encodings including UTF-8.