Meadows Publishing Solutions (MPS) today announced that they have released their AutoPrice software for QuarkXPress 7.0 Universal Binary for the Macintosh. AutoPrice provides sophisticated linking of QuarkXPress, and Adobe InDesign, documents to any external database of information, and has been used by hundreds of major catalogers worldwide to streamline the process of updating and versioning prices and other information in catalog pages. Meadows will be demonstrating the new version of AutoPrice in Booth 214 at the ACCM Catalog Conference, May 21-23, at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center. For more information about MPS offerings, please visit www.meadowsps.com.
How it Works
AutoPrice works by letting the user establish “placeholders” within new or existing QuarkXPress or InDesign documents, which are linked to a database record. For products which have different price breaks, AutoPrice allows the user to specify additional search criteria for differentiating between the variations. Unlike other software products which require linking to a specific text box, AutoPrice enables linking to any range of text anywhere in a document. This means that the user does not have to restructure their layout to accommodate the links, making design and editing easy to manage.
Each placeholder appears as a blue underscore which floats with the text as changes are made. Placeholders can be edited and styled like normal text and once assigned, they are saved with the document for simplifying future updates. To update a document, users only need to select “Update Document” from under the AutoPrice menu and the latest information is extracted from the database and inserted automatically.
{B}Report Generation and Data Export
AutoPrice also provides a built-in report generator capable of generating reports which include a comprehensive list of every item that was updated, its current value, page number, missing items, error codes, and much more. This information is ideal for proofing purposes, index generation, or merging data back into a database or spreadsheet program. For database population, the AutoPrice Exporter Pro module provides even further exporting capabilities by enabling users to extract and format content into tables that can be uploaded into virtually any web or e-commerce database.
AutoPrice is now available from Meadows Publishing Solutions and its distributors. For more information, please visit www.meadowsps.com.
About Meadows Publishing Solutions
Meadows Publishing Solutions is a software development and consulting company specializing in commercial and custom XTensions for QuarkXPress, plug-in modules for Adobe InDesign and Adobe Acrobat and other extensible technologies. Meadows has developed a number of popular software packages for the database publishing and variable data printing markets, including their award-winning products AutoPrice and DesignMerge®. Founded in 1991, Meadows is based just outside of Chicago in Schaumburg, Illinois.
This article was last modified on January 18, 2023
This article was first published on May 15, 2007
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