Looking for a way to cut & paste in the variable text editior

[kmailinginc]

I am a novice at Fusion Pro. I've run lots of simple jobs with pdfs as backgrounds.

 

I am looking for a way to cut & paste copy into the text editor to avoid retyping customer text. I set up a copy block in the variable text editor and have variable data fields merged in static copy within the block.

 

Is there a way to avoid typing the static copy into the editor ?

 

Thanks in advance.

[rpaterick]

Are you looking at having ONE template(open and run job) setup that has your text fields always in one place and you just want to update the artwork or static background at the same time you connect to the data file?

[kmailinginc]

I'm working with a simple letter with letterhead & graphics in a pdf with blocks of copy set up in the variable text editor. Nothing fancy. I just am looking to see if there is a way to avoid typing in the copy in a block of text in the variable text editor. The cut and paste feature available in most other programs doesn't work in the editor.

 

Maybe there is a better way to set up the job. The customer provides me with a pdf of the letter. I use a pdf editor to delete any paragraphs of copy that have data fields merging into copy. I then set up a text block in the variable text editor and re-type the letter copy, add the fields from the database where needed. I set up the address block, barcode etc. No problems -it works... I just have to retype the text I've deleted from the pdf, into the variable text editor. My typing and proofing skills are not great so I'm trying to avoid possible typos.

[rpaterick]

My typing and proofing skills are not great so I'm trying to avoid possible typos.

 

VARIABLE in the body paragraphs of the letter and is in different areas of each new letter, I just don't see an option to automate.

 

Can the client supply the raw file as well to you so you could copy the text that you need out and then paste into your variable/body paragraph? Eliminating the "typing" is probably the first thing to do.

[lance]

I think what he is saying, and what I have experienced, is that copy and paste works like crap in the text editor, at least in the Mac version.

 

Frequently, when I copy text from an outside source, be it a Word document, or a plain text file, etc., and then try to paste it into the text editor, the pasted text turns into three or four gibberish characters.

 

The funny thing is that you can paste that exact same text into the remark area at the top of the editor just fine. Sometimes it even works to paste into the remark area, then reselect and copy from the remark area and paste into the editor area. Usually you have to close the dialog box and reopen it after you copy, but before you paste again. This tends to strip out line feed characters though.

 

I really like the functionality of FusionPro, and I think the potential for the product is great, but the sloppy, buggy user experience is very frustrating.

[rpaterick]

I think what he is saying, and what I have experienced, is that copy and paste works like crap in the text editor, at least in the Mac version.

 

 

Yeah, the Mac Word docs do not open all the time properly in Mac, even if the fonts are loaded you still can run into text re-flow. I guess it depends on how big the client is and if you would need to look into a basic PC box in-order not to fight word docs. or Microsoft Office that potentially comes from a PC client.

[lance]

Yes, but I am not talking about typical munged formatting from Word documents. I am talking about copying an entire paragraph of text from almost any source; a plain .txt file, or from an email, or from a Quark document and pasting it into the editor and getting '^ ,\' or something similar.

 

The editor in FusionPro is not that great even when it works. I would love to be able to do my coding in an outside editor and then paste into the FusionPro editor when I was finished, but it never works. I remember several times trying to copy a chunk of code from an email (from the old mailing list) and having it not work. Had to manually retype it in the editor.

 

I know I've read that the editor in the Mac version is basically add-on technology Printable has licensed from another company, which is different from the editor in the Windows version.

[Dan Korn]

Yes, but I am not talking about typical munged formatting from Word documents. I am talking about copying an entire paragraph of text from almost any source; a plain .txt file, or from an email, or from a Quark document and pasting it into the editor and getting '^ ,\' or something similar.

Lance - Thanks for the feedback. I'm sorry that FusionPro is not working as expected. We (Printable) do want to be able to address these issues. If you could provide a specific example of copy-and-paste, or any other functionality, not working correctly and either post it to a new thread on this forum, or (preferably) send it to Support, that will be extremely helpful for us to be able to diagnose and fix the problem.

 

As far as I know, copy-and-paste should work fine with plain text. But there are some known issues with pasting "rich" text from QuarkXPress and InDesign (as well as Microsoft Word), partly because they use varying, non-standard pasteboard styles, and because FusionPro doesn't support every low-level text style that QuarkXPress and InDesign does (or vice-versa!). We are addressing some of these issues in an upcoming release. Your detailed feedback to help us identify specific problems will be invaluable in this effort.

I remember several times trying to copy a chunk of code from an email (from the old mailing list) and having it not work. Had to manually retype it in the editor.

Well, now you're talking about the JavaScript Rule Editor, which is a completely different dialog than the Variable Text Editor, based on different underlying technology. The old email list did have some specific encoding issues which caused trouble, which are obviously moot now with the new forum you are currently reading. And the entire Rule Editor has been updated since days of that old email list and the pre-5.x versions of FusionPro as well. Believe me, those problems with the old list bugged me more than anyone else. But I've copied-and-pasted lots of code between the 5.x and 6.x Rule Editor and this forum, on both Windows and Mac, with hardly any problems. Again, if you can let us know about a specific problem with the current software (and the current forum), we will be happy to look into it.

I know I've read that the editor in the Mac version is basically add-on technology Printable has licensed from another company, which is different from the editor in the Windows version.

The Text Editor, like all the GUI elements of FusionPro Desktop, or any other cross-platform program (including Adobe Acrobat itself), is built upon drastically different low-level technologies on Windows and Mac. However, Macintosh development presents some unique challenges, as different underlying technologies are available under different minor revisions of Mac OS X. This has implications for many areas of the product, but specifically regarding the Text Editor, because we still support Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger," we haven't been able to use all of the newer APIs such as CoreText which are only available in Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard" and later. We are definitely working on upgrading these areas of the product to be optimized under later versions of Mac OS X, including 10.6 "Snow Leopard," without sacrificing support for older operating systems that many customers are still using.

[Dan Korn]

I'm working with a simple letter with letterhead & graphics in a pdf with blocks of copy set up in the variable text editor. Nothing fancy. I just am looking to see if there is a way to avoid typing in the copy in a block of text in the variable text editor. The cut and paste feature available in most other programs doesn't work in the editor.

 

Maybe there is a better way to set up the job. The customer provides me with a pdf of the letter. I use a pdf editor to delete any paragraphs of copy that have data fields merging into copy. I then set up a text block in the variable text editor and re-type the letter copy, add the fields from the database where needed. I set up the address block, barcode etc. No problems -it works... I just have to retype the text I've deleted from the pdf, into the variable text editor. My typing and proofing skills are not great so I'm trying to avoid possible typos.

In general, taking static output or samples from a customer or graphic designer and converting it to be a variable data template is a manual process, which can be quite time-consuming. The static designer often does not consider many of the ways in which the content may need to be changed dynamically for variable data.

 

Starting with a PDF template can be particularly problematic. PDF is primarily a visual output format and doesn't generally retain information about the "flow" of the text that can be retrieved programmatically with 100 percent reliability, so even with the editing tools in Acrobat Pro, text in a PDF document is not always easy to cut-and-paste. Acrobat is simply not a design/layout tool like InDesign or QuarkXPress. If you can get a hold of the original QuarkXPress or Adobe InDesign document from your customer, you will have a greater ability to mark particular frames from the source design document and export to a FusionPro template which is better optimized for variable data.

 

Also, there are many ways in which a FusionPro job can be set up to re-use static content and alleviate re-typing of text. One thing you can do is point a Plain Text Resource at a plain text file on disk and read its contents at composition time; a simple rule will allow you to read conditionally from different files based on something else in the data. Other solutions are possible, depending on the particulars of your job.

 

If you could post your job, or a sample of it which demonstrates specifically what you're trying to do, I'm sure that someone on the forum here will have some more concrete ideas about how you can optimize your workflow. A picture is worth a thousand words.