Variable Lanyards

[DMarshall]

Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening,

Just wondering whether I could get a little assistance or at least be put on the right track!!

 

A customer of ours is looking to produce variable Lanyards for an upcoming conference where each participant will belong to between 1 and 6 categories. Each category has - obviously - a different name and also a different colour background. All categories are to appear below one another in a set order but if a participant doesn't belong in 1 or more categories they are to be suppressed and moved up, ie no blank spaces.

 

I had thought of doing these as variable text frames with a different colour per frame but I am new to Java scripting and need help please with moving text boxes if fields are blank.

 

Am I on the right track and if so could you help please, if not any suggestions would be appreciated.

 

I don't have final data, colours etc as the job is still a few weeks off.

 

Best regards

 

Dan

[FreightTrain]

DMarshall,

It sounds like all 6 categories are themselves static (meaning, the color and category name do not change). It is the Attendee, their participation in and order of each category that is variable. Right?

 

You have a couple options;

1) Create each category as an image and add the images into a text frame as an in-line set of graphics. In this way you will be able to use the “Suppress if empty” feature for each Image Rule, which will in essence be a Paragraph. Here is an example of the one of the Category Rules:

if (Field("Category 1") != "")

{

return new FusionProResource(Field("Category 1")+'.jpg', "graphic", true).value;

}

else

{

return "";

}

 

Then this rule would be inserted in a frame with the other category rules. It is important to make sure your values for each Category matches the file name for that categories image: <<Category 1>> = “Red Group”, your image should be named “Red Group.jpg” (of course it can be any image type).

 

 

2) Another more labor intensive option is to have 6 layout pages, with one to 6 categories. Then you would be able to activate a specific page, based on how many categories an attendee is involved with.

 

This would use “FusionPro.Composition.SetBodyPageUsage(name, usage)” to activate the correct page. Where name is the Page name and usage would be true for the active page (assuming) all pages are inactive by default.

 

Hope this helps