Greg Mouning wrote:
Matej Cepl <ceplm <at> seznam.cz> writes:
In the world of Office applications it is called MailMerge and it is
certainly available in OpenOffice. RTFM for more.
Matej
Thanks for your reply Matej and yes, I have reviewed the Mailmerge features
supported by Office Suite. However, VDP takes the Mailmerge process a couple of
steps further. For example, it optimizes documents such that printing repetitive
images are loaded dymanmically, therefore the merging and printing process is
accelerated. Another feature of VDP is the ability to print a variety of unique
letters containing different images and fonts within the same merge process.
Some of the products I am familiar with that utilize VDP include PrintShop Mail,
XmPie and Planet Press.
I've worked for a number of DP companies over the last 20 years that did
various kinds of what they called "mail merge" before the recent term
VDP came into vogue, and all of them had ways of optimizing loading of
graphics, changing images, signatures, letters, and font sizes within
the merge process. That comes with the territory.
VDP seems to be a merely a reasonable neolism to cover not only merging
for letter mail but merging for report and various other kinds of
documents, whether for printing and mailing (strict mail merge) or for
web display or for any other purpose.
Both MS Word and OpenOffice Writer have "the ability to print a variety
of unique letters containing different images and fonts within the same
merge process" (and I imagine this is true of some other word
processors). You can also do special programming "such that printing
repetitive images are loaded dynamically". But this requires more
programming knowledge than most users possess. It is among the "out of
the box" features.
Generally speaking, when used with high speed printers, word processors
are used professionally for data merging only in exceptional cases, for
example for quick and dirty jobs with small files where complex printing
is required. For large files, they are annoying slow compared to
software especially developed for mail merge / VDP use, generally
spooling far more slowly than a high-speed printer can print.
MS Word's merge also has the annoying bug of losing its place somewhere
between 1,000 and 2,000 records and jumping back to the first record in
the file, which means, after bitter experience, in those cases where MS
Word seemed a logical choice to quickly set up a merge with a small
file, the input file had to be split into further files of under a 1,000
records.
OpenOffice Writer does not have this bug, and such minimal use as we
have made of its mail merge worked well. The particular job we used as a
test required jumping between English and French letter text depending
on language code. (We could also have done this in MS Word.)
We also use OpenOffice Writer (as we formerly used MS Word) as the end
point of an automation process to generate job run sheets. The driving
program picks up much of the information from our corporate job
database, the data file currently open, and from information likely to
be found in the directory containing the current data file, then opens a
form on the screen, largely filled in, for the programmer to complete or
change. We also use it for other kinds of standard reports generated
from data.
In short, OpenOffice has all the VDP facility one would expect from a
top level word processor. But no word processor has the speed and
automatic efficiency one would expect from a good dedicated VDP programs.
Similarly, though you can use OpenOffice Writer and MS Word as
publishing programs, there are better dedicated publishing programs
available for those purposes also. You can use OpenOffice Writer or MS
Word as a programming editor, but there are also far better products for
that purpose.
Nor is OOBasic combined with OpenOffice's built-in functions a very easy
language to program in compared to the script languages I am familiar
with which are included as part of good, specialized VDP software which
focus almost entirely on making VDP processing easy and efficient.
We would not think of junking our current expensive mail merge software
in favor of OpenOffice or any relatively inexpensive general word
processing software. On the other hand, for a small business with at
least one employee who is willing and able to make OpenOffice Writer
sing, it is possible that most of what is required in the way of VDP
could be done using OpenOffice (or other inexpensive software).
Jallan
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