On Tue, Feb 11, 2003 at 09:49:47AM -0500,
Elburn@aol.com wrote:
/_A friend of mine has an application where he needs to do a mail merge. The
/_kicker is that each letter must have a diff signature based on the contents
/_of a merge field. The signature is a graphic file and there are over a
/_thousand of them.
/_
/_He may be willing to pay a consulting fee. At this time he is using WINDOWS
/_this could be a good time to start him on linux if Wordstar will do this, he
/_has been unable to do it using MSWORD, however if wordstar can't do it but
/_you know how to do it in word would still want to talk to you.
/_
Seems to me that the best way to tackle this is in
baby steps. Stuff the information in a database
(e.g MySQL, PostgreSQL) and then just link up via
odbc. MS Word does a fairly decent job on mail merges.
Here's the kicker: You need a database server :-)
I would plop a low end box in his home/office
with MySQL/Apache/PHP installed. Install something like
phpmyadmin so as he can admin/manage any databases he/she may
create.
Maybe I'm all wet here, but anytime you have
"over a thousand" of something, you can't go wrong
stuffing that something into a database in order
to manage it better.
I'd like to see this thread remain on the list
as I think it is important everyone has the opportunity
to contribute/listen to solutions to everyday
problems/applications.
v/r
-Mike
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