How do I treat a figure's referenced filename as a variable?

Report · Nov 10, 2009

Hi,

I asked yesterday about variables in markers (and got a workable answer, thanks!) . Today I have the same question about the Referenced File in the Object Properties of a figure. (I hunted for object tools but came up empty.)

I have many documents that I'm single-sourcing from one set of .fm files. I use a combination of conditional text and variables. At the moment I have all the artwork files in one folder with figure object properties pointing into that folder. When I switch to another version of the single source document, I copy all the artwork for that version into the art folder. This is doable, but a bit of a pain.

Is there any way to treat the Referenced File in the Object Properties of a figure like a variable to avoid all the swapping in?. Do you have a better approach I can use?

Thanks,

Dave

Report · Nov 10, 2009

You could save the document as MIF and update the paths in the <ImportObFileDI ... > and <ImportObFile ... > MIF elements. Here, "update" would mean replacing the paths using a text tool.

Some time ago I wrote a Windows command file involving dzbatcher (for converting a document to MIF from the command line) and GNU sed with an input file to search and replace the paths.

-- I'm not sure if this is more convenient than your current practice, but you could give it a try. Once you've set it up, you're only a double-click and a few ten seconds away from the results.

dzbatcher: http://www.datazone.com/dzbatcher2.html

GNU sed for Windows: http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/sed.htm

Johannes