OT: Software Recommendation

Grrrr; "I thought that" ffs.

Label editing stuff does sound about right, but the last time we bought some it was a) expensive and b) specialised (ie, for thermal label printers or whatever).

not sure I can envisage what you mean by plates or list text but visible margins, test editing, basic drawing sounds very much in the remit of desk top publishing software such as Quark Express, MS Publisher, Adobe Pagemaker, etc.

Have you tried using a label template with a wordprocessor? Most of the better office suites have basic shape/drawing tools. Possibly Star/Open office for windows might have something. Or possibly even a DTP program like Serif (if it still exists), or something on linux that allows you to create a frame then allows you to fill the frame rather than the page.

It sounds like what you are groping towards is desktop publishing software. I'm not sure what you mean by "plates" in this context, but DTP is how we produce printing plates.

InDesign CS2 does what you want as does Quark or even Microsoft Publisher (free with Office). Publisher is about as good as you would expect for something given away - i.e. it's s**te.

You can download InDesign to try from Adobe:

Then follow Print and Publishing link on the RHS of the page.

You create a master page for the layout (margins etc.) then place text boxes to flow the text into, if it spills over into extra pages InDesign will add the page and format it according to the master style.

Drop me an email - tim at timkemp dot net

Hmmm, that's something I'd not considered, long time since I've use DTP.

Easiest scenario is probably to imagine an A4 sheet of address labels (no gap inbetween each label). Each individual label would be my single plate (my working area), the A4 would be my multiple plate size (defining how many labels I can have on a page).

On my individual label, I would want to be able to define margins and set my font/sizes/etc. Once that first individual label is complete, I then need to be able to import text from a file on to that label. Say that there are 30 lines of text in my file, it would result in 30 labels. So if the A4 page can hold 12 individual labels, then I would end up with two and a half master pages (12, 12 & 6).

The problem with Corel apparently was that, if the text from a single line of the file was too long to fit in the available label width, it flowed over onto a new label instead of condensing the text to fit (which seems a bit stupid).

I believe I have a copy of Publisher stashed away on this computer actually. I shall see if I can find it.

Hi Lordy UK

Try Design Pro 5. I use that programme for address labels and it is based on the Avery Label facility.

I use the 21 to the A4 sheet format and have thousands and thousands of addresses on and print off on a regular basis. For example one Association has over 2000 members, another section of Associations has over 300. I have

The Avery range goes up from 65 to a sheet (mini labels) to just one A4

Hope that helps

Mike

Can the label size and the page size be set to whatever I require ? (It's not actually A4 labels that I am working with, I only meant that as an example).

I can't answer that one for certain. The labels come in different sizes on an A4 as I explained, address labels, DVD labels, Tape labels, lots and lots of formats and no doubt here is an Avery web page.

I will see what I can dig up

Mike

Ah, for what you're trying to do, I suspect you really need Quark and the database publishing bits. It lets you keep the labels in a database and format the output using Quark.

I can't see you doing what you want in InDesign or Publisher.

An alternative is to create the labels as pictures in Illustrator/Pagemaker/Corel/Whatever and to place them as images into a Word document using Word's "Envelopes and Labels" feature to superimpose the variable text onto the labels.

Word comes complete with a full list of Avery label templates and other label companies usually ship with Word templates or allow you to download them.

We use a lot of Decadry labels and I use Word as above to put the cariable text onto the labels (for example lot number, sell by dates, etc).

If you want to have ultimate control over this sort of thing then Latex is the was to go.