Getting formatted text out of FileMaker

[Rover]

Hello and Help!

We're an auction house specializing in autographs and memorabilia. We use FileMaker to do all of our cataloging, 1 lot = 1 record in our database.

We produce a printed catalog 3-5 times a year (usually with 800-1200 lots), taking the text from FileMaker to MS Word to PageMaker to produce the material for the printer.

Most of our lot descriptions involve a lot of formatted text - particularly bold, italics, underline, allcaps and smallcaps.

To get from FileMaker to MS Word, we export as a tab delimited file, open the .tab file in Word, convert to a table, review for glitches (e.g. extra carriage returns), then save it as a Word document. We then use this document as input to an MS Word mail merge process to produce our catalog the way we want it.

With this method, it's a trivial matter to get the formatting we want at the field level (e.g. the Title field is always uppercase bold, all fields are in the Minion font); simply by specifying it in the Word merge master document.

Getting the formatting that's applied at the character level within a field (e.g. an italicized quotation included in the description) is another matter, however. Currently, we "tag" all formatted characters as we write the descriptions (e.g. alt+168 This sentence is bold. alt+168) Once the tags are present, getting the desired results is again a trivial matter; in the Word merged document we use a simple macro to convert the tags to the desired format.

The pain-in-the-posterior part of this whole process is getting the tags in place. Since we also use the FileMaker material for other purposes, we have to maintain two copies of the description - one with tags and one without. Two copies can easily lead to errors - change one, you gotta change the other, and so on. But the real problem is getting the tags inserted in the first place - it's time consuming and error prone (forget a closing tag and the Word macro will produce really strange results). Tagging probably adds 25-35% to our cataloging time.

Now it's obvious that this formatting information is available in the FileMaker database, it's visible in two of FileMaker's specialized "exports" - screen viewing and printing. In particular, printing, at it's simplest level, is basically a form of tagged output (<bold on tag>This sentence is bold.<bold off tag>).

So far my efforts at capturing a usable copy of the print stream have failed miserably, all I've been able to get is gobble-de-goop (this used to be soooo easy back in the pre-Windows days). I've also examined test FileMaker files at the byte level - I can see something happening when formatting is applied, but exactly what is not readily apparent. It's obviously NOT using embedded tags, it looks more like some kind of table reference or even a map is being used to keep track of the formatting.

So, after all that jabbering, here's my question: Does anybody know of any way what-so-ever to get FileMaker to produce a capturable output that automatically contains tags indicating character formating? A native FileMaker technique, a plug-in or a separate program would be acceptable. Or something that could capture a usable version of the print steam would do the job.

Barring current availability of such a program or technique, does anybody know of someone who could write a suitable plug-in, program or printer driver for me?

Thanks

[cjaeger]

with applescript, it's easy.

tell app "FileMaker Pro"

set $fomattedtext to (cell"text" of current record of database 1 ) as styled text

end tell

Styled text is indeed text tagged with an index of formating commands, equivalend to Mac Resource types "TEXT" and "styl".

And there are FileMaker plugins that convert styld text to HMTL/Xpress tags. But as far as I know, they do not work with Windows.

[cjaeger]

this might help you in the tagging process, though

textformatter.zip

[Rover]

Christian

Unfortunately, that won't help since I'm on windows. I should have said that upfront.

Can you name some of the plug-ins you mentioned, at least I'd have a place to start looking.

Thanks

[cjaeger]

the attachment above should help with creation of tags during input only.

here are some urls to the plugins:

http://www.abstrakt.com/distyler.html

http://www.jazzmedia.com.au/downloads/

http://cssw.biz/exporter.html

[Rover]

Whoops! I'm new to these forums and I didn't realize you'd sent me an attachment.

I've tried it and it's great! It's not the ultimate answer that I'm looking for, but it sure will save us a lot of time and trouble!! Many thanks!!

As you said, the distyler and exporter plugins are for Mac only, so I'm still looking.

Again, thanks!