“a final merge of product particulars with Xcatalog is an enormous boon”

January 22, 2007 by cpr

Enclosed is a copy of our 2006 catalogue. […]

We do all initial page layout with Xtags, including picture placement. Once we have the book more or less the way we want it, we hand it over to our design partner for final composition. They do things like adjust spacing, resize pictures, balance pages, and compose and place the vignettes used as filler on some pages. In the week before we go to press, we do a final merge (using Xcatalog tags) of prices, packaging, descriptions, minimum order quantities, etc.

We’ve been very happy with both products. Xtags for Quark is very fast, and I can produce a PDF section proof of 30-40 pages in about a half-hour. That proof, though missing some fine tuning and page vignettes, is a very close facsimile of what the book will look like. The ability to generate representative proofs so quickly means that we can focus on product selection and arrangement rather than on typesetting details.

The ability to do a final merge of product particulars with Xcatalog is an enormous boon. The process has worked flawlessly and it eliminates that nervous last-minute proof-checking that always seems to accompany manual changes. We haven’t managed to reduce composition to a single click of a button, but this is a good start.

Thanks again for all your technical help when we were getting started. Part of the reason we decided to go with Xtags and InCatalog for InDesign is that we could leverage our knowledge of the Quark products and I knew we could count on you if we ran into difficulties.

—Charlie R.