BookBarcode Howtos

The “BookBarcode Howtos” PDF (10 pages) brings out basics and advanced techniques in barcode design and management. Click the below image to get to the heart of the matter:

Download “BookBarcode Howtos” (PDF)

More About Batch Processing and Data Merge

The BookBarcode 2.03 package provides a TestBatch.inx file (InDesign XML Interchange Document) which you can import in InDesign CS3, CS4 and CS5. This file offers a predefined set of barcode templates for testing Batch Processing. A few words about how we make it from a sample CSV dataset. Our records have ‘Title’, ‘Author’, ‘Price’ and ‘EAN13’ tab-separated fields:

Our source text file contains the data separated by tabs. The first row contains the field names.

Note that the ‘EAN13’ field only contains the 13 digits of each EAN —as required in BookBarcode Batch Processing templates.

With the source file ready, we set up a new InDesign document to perform Data Merge. Let's first create the template in which we want to flow the records:

Creating the template and linking the fields using the Data Merge panel.

From the Data Merge panel’s flyout menu we choose Select Data Source, navigate to the source file, and click Open. The Data Merge panel now lists the data fields. We can then double-click each field name to insert it at the current insertion point. Note that InDesign uses double quotes to represent Data Merge fields, in which we use one of the BookBarcode patterns, <bkbc>...</bkbc>, to markup the ‘EAN13’ data.

Remember to group the barcode textframe with the ISBN frame. A good practice is to put the resulting group on a separated layer —see the red frames in the above screenshot.

Once the template layout suits us, let's click Create Merged Document at the bottom right of the Data Merge panel. In the Records tab, set Records per Document Page to “Multiple Records” and go to the Multiple Record Layout pane. Check Preview Multiple Record Layout and adjust the margins and spacing to set up the placement of the records in the page:

Multiple Record Layout pane in the Create Merged Document dialog.

Finally, click OK to create the merged document.

What's new in BookBarcode 2.03

• BookBarcode still supports three UI languages: English, French, and German. My special thanks to Gerald Singelmann from The InDesign FAQ who helped me improve the German translation.

• The script is now fully compatible with InDesign CS5.

• The ISBN Validation module has been updated and is compliant with the latest International ISBN Agency specifications.

• The Batch Processing feature has been added in both PRO and TRY versions —the TRY version is limited to 5 items.

• The barcode style settings are now session-persistent in InDesign CS4 and CS5.

• For more details about BookBarcode, see the main page:
http://www.indiscripts.com/category/projects/BookBarcode.

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