EasyCatalog 10.1.0/6.5.0

The latest version of EasyCatalog can be installed using the installer that can be downloaded from our downloads page.

Enhancements

EasyCatalog

• InDesign Server:  If “Multiple Users Share This Workspace” option is set when running under server, each instance will get its own local cache folder.If a configuration name has been specified for the server instance, this will be appended to the default folder name:
  
  ~/Library/Caches/Adobe InDesign/Version 5.0/EasyCatalog Workspace (configurationname)

  1	~/Library/Caches/Adobe InDesign/Version 5.0/EasyCatalog Workspace (configurationname)

  
  Otherwise, if InDesign Server is listening for SOAP messages on a port, the port number will be appended to the folder name:
  
  ~/Library/Caches/Adobe InDesign/Version 5.0/EasyCatalog Workspace (8080)

  1	~/Library/Caches/Adobe InDesign/Version 5.0/EasyCatalog Workspace (8080)

• Performance improvement when opening a data source that contains a significant number of custom fields.
• Performance improvement for XREFFIELD custom field function.
• Tool tips now show entire cell content on the XSL dialog.
• A new popup containing a list of fields for the data source has been added to the ‘Custom Field’ pane in Field Options. This will insert the selected field name into the custom field command window.
• Added ‘Exclude from Sync with Document’ advanced field option which will prevent fields from showing as ‘in error’ in the panel.
• When using ‘Update Panel’, characters can be cleansed out of the panel content by including nothing on the left side of the cleansing statement – e.g.:
  
  =^-;

  1

  =^-;

• Holding the command key whilst selecting ‘Adopt Fields’ will attempt to change the key fields used in the document. The original data source must be open, and the new data source must also contain the fields that were originally used as key fields.
• Configurations now store the ‘lock’ state of the panel.
• ‘Check For Updates’ now no longer opens a web page, the user is informed about new versions without leaving EasyCatalog.
• Added ‘Update Selected Rule(s)’ menu option to the “Formatting Rules” panel which will force the Rules in the current document selection to be updated, whether they have changed or not.
• A Script Label can be used to bind the bottom of frames together – for example, you give each frame a name by entering the following into the Script Label panel:
  
  <ecscript name=“tableframe”/>

  1	<ecscript name=“tableframe”/>

  
  A frame can be bound to the bottom of another by specifying a ‘bind’ node:
  
  <ecscript name = "imageframe"> <bind bottomtobottom = "tableframe"/> </ecscript>

  1	<ecscript name = "imageframe"> <bind bottomtobottom = "tableframe"/> </ecscript>

• Added Script Label command that can be applied to a table to restrict vertical cell merging to specific columns:
  
  <ecscript> <verticalmergewhen header=”VAT ID”/> </ecscript>

  1 2 3

  <ecscript> <verticalmergewhen header=”VAT ID”/> </ecscript>

• The ‘ENV’ custom field command now supports the ‘datasourcelastsynctime’ option to retrieve the date and time the data source was last updated.  This will be the same text as is displayed on the Data Source Information dialog.
• Rules and Rule Sets are now exported as part of the export to IDML process.
• Added ‘Is Empty’ and ‘Is Not Empty’ operands for numeric field types on the ‘Subset’ dialog.
• If a filter is applied to a panel, the number of records and the total number of records will now be shown in the bottom left of the panel.
• The ‘Package’ button now supports Relational data sources.
• Added support for using meta-characters in the ‘text’ field for hyperlinks in Field Options.
• If a button is tagged with a Field Specifier, and the button has a ‘go to URL’ action, the URL will now be set automatically from the field’s content.
• Added simple ‘WORDWRAP’ custom field to perform a simple character-based word wrap on the given text:
  
  WORDWRAP(FIELDSTR(Table Name Description),20,^n)

  1	WORDWRAP(FIELDSTR(Table Name Description),20,^n)

  
  Parameters:
  1. The text to wrap
  2. The maximum number of characters per line
  3. The character to use to break the line
• Added ‘Update Formatting Rules’ checkable menu option to the ‘Update Document’ menu. When this is turned off, the document is updated on a field-by-field basis; when it is turned on Formatting Rules will also be repaginated if required.
• The Auto Pickup dialog has been made larger, with a multi-line edit box to accommodate more text.
• APPLYXSLT custom field command now also accepts UNC paths.
• HTML-based table creation supports a new ‘width’ type to resize each column to fit it’s content without limiting the width of a column to the width of the table.

Excel Data Provider

• Import now supports merged cells: all cells spanned by the merge will contain the same content in EasyCatalog.
• Added an ‘All Sheets’ option when importing an Excel spreadsheet.  A new custom field will automatically be created called “Sheet Name” which will be populated with the name of the sheet that each record was imported from.  On ‘Update Data Source’, this field will be used to recreate the sheets and the records should be exported on their appropriate sheets.

Pagination Module

• The ‘Apply Swatch’ and ‘Apply Object Style’ Pagination Rules now ignore whitespace around field names.
• Added two new scripting hooks to template-based pagination: ‘PrePaginateDocument.jsx’ and ‘PostPaginateDocument.jsx’ will now be called.  The name of the document that will be created can be obtained using:
  
  var myName= app.scriptArgs.getValue("documentTitle");

  1	var myName= app.scriptArgs.getValue("documentTitle");

• ‘Fit Frame to Field Depth’ has been modified to allow both a height and a width field to be specified for the frame size.
• A quantity field can now be specified on ‘Master Based’ pagination.  This will repeat the record or group being paginated by the quantity specified by the nominated field.
• If no X and Y field is specified for position-based pagination, items will be placed onto the page in a grid format.
• Guide-based pagination now also takes anchored boxes into account when ‘collision detection’ is on.
• Grow and Flow can now be specified on multiple boxes in the Product Style.  An additional Pagination Rule is available to give each Grow and Flow box a name. When breaking to a new page, boxes will be linked together based on their names.

Scripting Module

• Added ability to set any global preference:
  
  myEasyCatalogObject.setPreference("multiuserworkspace", "true")

  1	myEasyCatalogObject.setPreference("multiuserworkspace", "true")

• Added ‘package to folder’ scripting call:
  
  var myds = app.easycatalogObject.datasources.item(“Stock.csv"); myds.packageToFolder("Macintosh HD:users:easycatalog:desktop:test package”);

  1 2	var myds = app.easycatalogObject.datasources.item(“Stock.csv"); myds.packageToFolder("Macintosh HD:users:easycatalog:desktop:test package”);

• Scripts can now reference data sources before they are loaded, which allows parameters to be configured that would otherwise prevent the data source from loading.
• Added ‘loadState’ property to the DSO object to indicate its current state: NOT_LOADED, CONFIGURATION_OK, CONFIGURATION_OK_DATA_OK, CONFIGURATION_OK_DATA_FAILED
• ‘addCustomField’ function modified to set the content of a custom field if it already exists.
• Added ‘placed’ property to the Field object to indicate whether the field is placed in the document.
• Added ‘lastSyncTime’ property to the Data Source object which returns the last synchronise date and time for the data source.
• Added ‘configurationExists’ scripting call to determine whether the named configuration exists.  The name of a configuration stored in the workspace folder, or the path to a configuration file, can be passed to this function:
  
  var myEasyCatalog = app.easycatalogObject; var myDS = app.easycatalogObject.datasources.item("Catalogue Integration Report.xls"); var myDV = myDS.dataviews.item("Catalogue Integration Report.xls"); if (myDV.configurationExists("Bags")) { $.writeln("configuration exists"); } else { $.writeln("configuration doesn't exist"); }

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

  var myEasyCatalog = app.easycatalogObject; var myDS = app.easycatalogObject.datasources.item("Catalogue Integration Report.xls"); var myDV = myDS.dataviews.item("Catalogue Integration Report.xls"); if (myDV.configurationExists("Bags")) {     $.writeln("configuration exists"); } else {     $.writeln("configuration doesn't exist"); }

• Added ‘replaceRecord’ scripting call to replace all instances of one record with another in the document:
  
  dso.replaceRecord(myDocument, “ABC123”, “ABC124”)

  1	dso.replaceRecord(myDocument, “ABC123”, “ABC124”)

Bug Fixes

The following bugs have been fixed in this release of EasyCatalog. For clarity, the bug reports listed below may show the original problem as reported. It is often not possible to detail the fix for each issue as they involve internal changes to EasyCatalog.

EasyCatalog

• ‘SQL’ custom field command not being executed for non-Relational data sources.
• Sometimes the “Images” menu appears at the bottom of the pop-out menu.
• Crash when populating a table that contains other tables.
• Fixed-width table columns are being resized to an invalid value.
• The FIELDNAME custom field expects a parameter when it doesn’t need one.
• URL access sometimes attempts to access an invalid URL.
• URL access attempts to access URLs that end in a forward slash.
• (Windows) EasyCatalog crashes when attempting to type an output date format string into Field Options.
• The Formatting Rules panel has no minimum size.
• ‘Update Document’ does not correctly identify the correct layer for overset text. For example, if a layer is locked, overset text would still be updated.  It is assumed that overset text belongs to the layer that the last box in the text chain is on.
• Picture frame crop settings are always removed from picture boxes, which prevents manual settings being applied. They should only be removed  when an alignment or scale is specified in the Field Options.
• Incorrect spelling of STRIPTRAILINGZEROES custom number format option.
• Crash when opening and aborting a checkout from WoodWing Enterprise.
• Multiple <TABLE> tags in a formatted field cause the tables to be incorrectly positioned in the text flow.
• Occasional protective shutdown of InDesign when copying Formatting Rules data.
• ‘CopyBlackBoxCmdData’ appearing in the Undo menu.
• White Space is being stripped before custom field commands that are used in the suffix Field Option.
• CHrash on ‘Adopt Fields’ when removing invalid Rule Set record markers.
• Hyperlink fields that contain formatted content are always showing as ‘in error’.
• Incorrect style applied to some characters when populating Field Specifiers or updating the document with new content.
• Auto Pickup crashes when using a regular expression, and one of the key fields identified by the expression is empty.

File Data Provider

• Error messagewhen loading a file data source does not show the path to the file being loaded.

Excel Data Provider

• File extensions not being added to the file on “Update Data Source”. A correct list of file extensions is now displayed in the file chooser dialog.
• User is unable to choose ‘.xlsm’ files.
• “Update Data Source” not functional on Windows.
• Rows that contain only white space should be ignored.
• Date/Time-formatted cells are not being correctly identified.
• Changing field options on the configuration dialog is not updating the import preview.
• Empty columns should be ignored.
• Custom fields should not be exported on “Update Data Source”.

Pagination Module

• The wrong Formatting Rule in a Rule Set can sometimes be chosen when multiple items have multiple criteria applied. The order of the criteria affect the choice of Rule.
• Implied show/hide Pagination Rules actions are now applied last. Pagination will first check the show/hide rules that have been configured, and if all of those fail it will attempt to determine whether an implied hide or show should be executed.
• InDesign’s fitting options are not disabled if a fitting option from the Pagination Rules panel is also specified.
• Updating Rule Sets sometimes loses the paragraph style when replacing a Rule.
• Rule Sets in a duplicated text box cannot be updated.
• Template-based Pagination
  • Folders could sometimes be created in the output folder
  • Documents not re-composed before saving
• Master Pages Pagination
  • If the user has specified a ‘page’ field on the ‘Paginate’ dialog and there are insufficient positions on the specified page, pagination will continue on the next page rather than reporting an error.
  • If the user has overridden a master page item on the document page it will not be paginated.
  • Text threading is lost when overriding multiple items with the same Position Index.
• Guide-based Pagination
  • Not stopping on errors: for example, if a swatch colour is missing.
  • Across, Down (Aligned) sometimes moves to the next page when there is sufficient space remaining on the page.
  • When using Product Styles that are either double page or have odd/even page breaks applied, items can sometimes be skipped over. This occurs when a double page item needs to be paginated but the current page is a left-hand page (i.e. pagination is not inserting a right, then left to accommodate the double page item).
  • If a document is configured to be non-facing pages, pagination will still attempt to automatically place items that are as wide as the spread.
  • Pagination can sometimes get stuck in an infinite loop when re-inserting page headers.
  • Pagination stops if the current page contains no guides, even though the “Apply Master Named In” option would apply a new master page.

ODBC Data Provider

• If the SQL query changes, new numeric fields are not given a numeric format that also contains a negative mask.

Relational Module

• The ‘Check Syntax’ button returns a bogus error message.

Scripting Module

• updateCustomFields() function not working.