12 Basic Workflow Practices for Template Building in MarcomCentral®

[ehazzard]

1. The native file should be built at trim size. If the file contains a bleed, the bleed distance should extend past the artboard and have a negative value in the transform window. i.e. (-.125) on artboard equals correct bleed setup of 1/8 of an inch.

 

2. Naming conventions for Fields/Variables, Resources and Rules must not contain special characters; spaces, dashes and underscores are acceptable in naming conventions, although elimating all uses of special characters is encouraged.

 

3. Templates should be built from your local desktop or harddrive (MAC users), this eliminates special characters in the path name. Once Collected, template files can be stored back on a server.

 

4. Naming conventions for Fields/Variables, Resources and Rules can not start with a numeric value but a numeric value can be included in the name. i.e. Addr1 is acceptable, 1Addr is not acceptable.

 

5. Naming conventions for Fields/Variables, Resources and Rules must be greater than one character in length. i.e. RedBarn.jpg

is acceptable, a.jpg is not acceptable.

 

6. No segregation of files. All files used in Composition must reside in the same folder on your local desktop or harddrive. Sub folders are acceptable but should not be more than 3 root levels in the working folder, however, in a production environment (where more than one computer is being used) eliminating sub folders makes the template more portable between computers.

 

7. Each template should be worked on in a separate folder and its recommended to never have two templates open at the same time. To prevent this, a good form of practice is to quit Acrobat and FusionPro between builds.

 

8. All graphic frames in the template must include either a Graphic Field or Rule in order to return the graphic image.

 

9. If a graphic file is called out in a Graphic Rule, then the file name must match the library file exactly . If a graphic file is called out using a Graphic Field, then any graphic file can be associated to the frame in the library; no rule is necessary.

 

10. If new fonts have been activated using a Font Manager during the template building process you will need to load fonts into the Acrobat Directory so that they are embedded correctly into the PDF. To Load Fonts: In Acrobat, FusionPro tab > Advanced > Load Fonts > Load All/New.

 

11. Two basic recommendations when Composing the template: In the Composition dialogue window, under the Output tab - always deselect Font Subset; under the Graphics tab - always select Never (Graphics at full resolution) option.

 

12. In the case where the user is basing a Rule on the selection of a graphic, you no longer need to include the matchPathToString Rule; it's now built in to FP 7.1. The new function is called GetFileName(). It just returns the file name from the path passed to it. i.e. return GetFileName(Field("MyGraphic")); will return the file name of whatever graphic is populating for that field, minus the path.

Edited February 8, 2011 by ehazzard