Data Merge in a magazine page

I agree fully with Dave Nagel in his article "Data Merge in Adobe InDesign CS: Creating multiple-record layouts for catalogs and buyer's guides" in Digital Media Designer that the PageMaker plugin for InDesign is a seriously overlooked feature.

In part this may be because it was originally part of PageMaker 7, the version of PageMaker which came out after InDesign was announced and which had little else to offer except some updated filters and a halfhearted attempt to make it work with OSX in Classic mode and with Windows XP.

The Data Merge feature was really quite useful and I added a chapter to my book Publication Production using PageMaker on how it could form the basis of a rudimentary ad booking system for small publications.

In Dave's article he shows how it can be used to produce a buyer's guide page in a magazine which can be almost instantly updated from a spreadsheet file. No longer does the designer or typesetter have to search for those items which have changed and risk mistyping a phone number or a name.

For upmarket publications there may be better (and more expensive) ways of doing this, but for the smaller magazine, newspaper or book where entries need to be updated instantly and cheaply it is a real money saver.

Flying coffee cups and washing keyboards

I've seen plenty of near-full coffee cups go flying in publishers' offices, so I'm not ashamed to send back a manuscript with a slight sign that it was read while I was drinking or eating. I'm sure authors will consider that better than receiving back a manuscript which has not been open. (I'm told some stick a hair or similar across pages to check -- in the manner that crime novel detectives would stick a matchstick across a door to see if anyone had entered a room).

However, at one newspaper where I worked, the IT manager felt it neccessary to put up a large notice in the copy editors' area which read something like "If you must drink coffee at the desk, please take it without sugar!"

Apparently keyboards and terminals would survive the coffee, and he regularly had one or two keyboards hanging from the partitions in his workshop after being washed with a hose; the sugar is what does the damage. But I don't think any editor or publisher would dare to ban coffee for copy editors, certainly not on the late shift.

And I do know that several of those photographs from correspondents and readers which "went missing" mysteriously, were lost after being smothered in a takeaway curry.

I'm surprised how many lost items turned up in no fit state to return when I had to move everything out to have my office recarpeted this month. However I'm more worried by all the things I can't find since moving everything back in. I know where they used to be.

However, if you do spill something on a keyboard and decide to take the risk of washing and drying, the one thing not to do is to undo those screws underneath. At ne time keyboards had little holders for the springs to fit in. Modern ones do not, so any attempt to open them results in a spray of several hundred parts over a wide area. It's quite impressive.

I've just this minute thought that if one could loosen those screws just enough one could produce this effect at the first touch by someone else...

Anyone else remember those old DOS programs that could sit looking like the old C: prompt but when anything was typed in would bring up a message of something like "Checking hard drive -- about to go into cleaning cycle" and manage to make the built-in speaker which usually just beeped produce a passable imitation of a washing machine spin cycle?

Surveys: do they tell you anything?

Recently on a newsgroup a magazine editor asked about some suggested questions for a survey on responses to the publication to be put to those attending a forthcoming meeting.

It was an opportunity for me to explain why I hate surveys, especially those presented at meetings: you either fill them out at random or go for the middle answer after you realize that you've been talking to colleagues and there isn't time to read the questions let alone answer.

It's a question which comes up in the book which we've just sent to the printers, a new edition of Type & Layout, which has been out of print for several years. The author, Colin Wheildon comments "over the years of my research, David Ogilvy more than once raised the question whether I was measuring reading comprehension or merely readability. I'm grateful for his persistence in moving me to confront this important and difficult question."

In this research he was measuring the extent to which typography and design affected understanding. His answer was that to overcome statements which might just reflect that a person had perused the articles and thought they understood them, was that there had to be actual questions on content to see whether the subjects had not only read the content, or thought that they had done so, but that they could answer questions which showed they had done so.

I was, in a way, pleased that it presented such major problems for the academics and practical researchers who advised Colin on this research, because it supported something I wrote in my own book on magazine publishing:

"'Let's put a reader survey in the next issue, to find out what the reader wants!' To my mind this is like governments forming a committee: it gives the appearance of doing something without actually having to take any possibly unpopular decisions. Surveys have to be exceptionally well designed to get useful answers and can be designed to produce mostly the answers those setting the questions want to get."

I also quoted Dick Smith, the millionaire businessman and adventurer who started Australian Geographic magazine as suggesting the best way to find out what needs doing is to talk to staff and customers. He was surprised how many companies, especially large ones, which forgot to do this.

So, I suggested better results would be gained by walking among the attendees and raising the subject of the publication, and have a few other people do the same.

Did I say that I dislike surveys?