storing a Word document as a customprop

[Peter Brigham MD]

Cool. That seems to work. Re the incremental save part -- if I am  
doing a "put (whatever) into URL..." and the URL specifies the same  
file name and path, then shouldn't it just be overwriting the file  
anyway each time? I would think that the "put into URL" form calls on  
system routines that simply replace the file and that Word would be  
totally ignorant of the process.

-- Peter

Peter M. Brigham
pmbrig at gmail.com
http://home.comcast.net/~pmbrig


On Jun 12, 2009, at 12:14 PM, Jan Schenkel wrote:

>
> Actually, RTF documents are pretty much on-par with native Word  
> documents as far as features are concerned, and tables definitely  
> work - perhaps not in TextEdit or WordPad ; but if you have a full  
> Word version, it should be just fine.
> Give it a try: save your Word doc as an RTF, suck it up in a Rev  
> custom prop, do the merge, and save it as an RTF again. Tip: when  
> you modify your template, always do a 'SaveAs' or Word may produce  
> an 'incremental' file, where your merge fields are garbled and  
> cannot be replaced.
>
> Jan Schenkel
> =====
> Quartam Reports & PDF Library for Revolution
> <http://www.quartam.com>
>
> =====
> "As we grow older, we grow both wiser and more foolish at the same  
> time."  (La Rochefoucauld)
>
>
> --- On Fri, 6/12/09, Peter Brigham MD <pmbrig at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> From: Peter Brigham MD <pmbrig at gmail.com>
>> Subject: Re: storing a Word document as a customprop
>> To: "How to use Revolution" <use-revolution at lists.runrev.com>
>> Date: Friday, June 12, 2009, 7:01 AM
>> Bummer. I can't use RTF because the
>> documents contain tables, and I'm pretty much stuck with
>> that. I'll use my own FORMalizer utility to overlay fields
>> on a PNG of the blank document and fill them in that way. I
>> was exploring other possibilities...
>>
>> -- Peter
>>
>> Peter M. Brigham
>> pmbrig at gmail.com
>> http://home.comcast.net/~pmbrig
>>
>>
>> On Jun 12, 2009, at 9:24 AM, Jan Schenkel wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> The Word file format is binary, and may contain
>> checksums that will not add up when you replace something in
>> it. It's better to save the Word file as an RTF document (as
>> this is not a binary, but text-based file format) and fill
>> that up instead.
>>> You may want to use the 'merge' function to make your
>> life easier - see also the articles that I wrote for the
>> RevUp Newsletter:
>>> - The Power of Merge (revUp | Issue 55 | August 18th,
>> 2008)
>>>   <http://runrev.com/newsletter/august/issue55/newsletter2.php>
>>> - The Word of Merge - part 1 (revUp | Issue 61 |
>> November 20th, 2008)
>>>   <http://runrev.com/newsletter/november/issue61/newsletter3.php>
>>> - The Word of Merge - part 2 (revUp | Issue 62 |
>> December 22nd, 2008)
>>>   <http://runrev.com/newsletter/december/issue62/newsletter3.php>
>>>
>>> HTH,
>>>
>>> Jan Schenkel
>>> =====
>>> Quartam Reports & PDF Library for Revolution
>>> <http://www.quartam.com>
>>>
>>> =====
>>> "As we grow older, we grow both wiser and more foolish
>> at the same time."  (La Rochefoucauld)
>>>
>>>
>>> --- On Fri, 6/12/09, Peter Brigham MD <pmbrig at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> From: Peter Brigham MD <pmbrig at gmail.com>
>>>> Subject: storing a Word document as a customprop
>>>> To: "Use-rev mailing list" <use-revolution at lists.runrev.com>
>>>> Date: Friday, June 12, 2009, 5:55 AM
>>>> I would like to generate a Word doc
>>>> stored in a customprop but I'd like to modify it
>> first by
>>>> script. I have a template successfully stored as
>> the
>>>> printDoc of this stack, with placeholders in
>> applicable
>>>> places like "<last>", "<first>", etc.
>> However,
>>>> this doesn't work:
>>>>
>>>> on mouseup
>>>>     put fld "Name" into tName
>>>>     put item 1 of tName into lastName
>>>>     put word 1 of item 2 of tName into
>>>> firstName
>>>>     put the printDoc of this stack into
>> tDoc
>>>>     replace "<last>" with lastName
>> in
>>>> tDoc -- * problem
>>>>     replace "<first>" with
>> firstName in
>>>> tDoc -- * problem
>>>>     put the printPath of this stack into
>>>> pPath
>>>>     -- contains something like
>>>> "binfile:/Users/pmbrig/Desktop/wordTest.doc"
>>>>     set the itemdelimiter to "/"
>>>>     put tolower(lastName) & ".doc"
>> into
>>>> item -1 of pPath
>>>>     set the filetype to "MSWDW8BN"
>>>>     put tDoc into url pPath
>>>> end mouseup
>>>>
>>>> I get an error from the finder that the file
>> "doesn't
>>>> appear to be a Microsoft Word file." If I comment
>> out the
>>>> two "replace" lines in the script, the original
>> template
>>>> file is exported fine, and it opens fine in Word
>> with a
>>>> double-click. So there's something Word doesn't
>> like about
>>>> the replace operation. Is there any way to do this
>> so I
>>>> create the template document modified with data
>> filled in
>>>> from Rev?
>>>>
>>>> -- Peter
>>>>
>>>> Peter M. Brigham
>>>> pmbrig at gmail.com
>>>> http://home.comcast.net/~pmbrig
>>>>
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>>>
>>>
>>>
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