Create documents in multiple applications

Question

I need to create an application that generates a bunch of templates for Office (2000), OpenOffice.org (2.0) and InDesign. The design of the templates will be performed in each application, but we need a system for placeholders so that my application opens the template, replaces the placeholder with some text (for example, name, address, phone number) and saves the document.

What is the best way to work with these placeholders? My idea would be to locate the placeholder using square brackets such as [address], [phone], and then search and replace the content that I get from the database. Indesign allows you to create named text fields, so I just need to paste the text into the desired text field.

Does anyone have a better idea?

Answer 1

Many people will create tokens (placeholders) using the format $$ xxxxxx $$, where $$ starts and ends the token. But for programs that have the built-in ability to provide something like this (for example, named text fields in InDesign, content controls in Word 2007, etc.), it’s usually better to use them because they have many additional features such as like saving formatting when text is changed or inserted.