Nowadays there are a lot of report writers on the market. Also there are a lot of useful utilities and plug-ins to automate certain lay outing tasks. However most of these tools just automate part of the process. Therefore we focus on automating the whole process as much as possible.

 

Why are we different?
Guideline's unique strength is that we start and continue where most report writers give up. Variable table widths, column-layouts, image positioning within a document or even within a page are just a few of the standard possibilities hard to implement using a regular report-writer.

 

Knowledge
One of the most valuable strengths of Guideline is the knowledge we have in publishing data to paper. With experience of over 250 projects we have built an extensive knowledge base within the company and our employees.

 

Standardised Software
Another strength of Guideline is the use of standardised software for our solutions. Therefore all our customers have the same software, be it maybe in another version. Using and developing standard software, which integrates with Adobe FrameMaker and InDesign, ensures

Languages
Publishing in West-European languages is something which is not very hard to do. However publishing to Russian, Greek or other central European languages requires a different approach. Even more so when you want to use a desktop publishing software tool such as Adobe FrameMaker or InDesign. At Guideline we have the expertise to publish to these DTP-packages based on XML and UTF-8 encoding, allowing for automated publishing of non-western languages. This also enables us to publish in Asian languages such as Japanese, Chinese and Korean.

 

Complex tables
Displaying data in a tabular format is very popular for technical catalogues. Formatting the data to a logical and understandable layout using horizontal and vertical straddling can be very complex. This will enhance the readability of the table. Also using these techniques the user will find the information required more easily. A final aspect is that the table is more attractive to look at. 

 

Another type of table we can generate automatically are rotated tables. These are particularly useful where a product group has just a few products but many attributes. The rotated table then places the attributes vertically and products horizontally.

 

 

A third option is to use Matrix tables. This is where the article is placed within the crossing point of two attributes. A very popular way of notating nuts, bolts and screws. A product is typically described by thread and length.

 

Full-document automation
Publications can be divided in to two sorts: technical and layout oriented catalogues. For the technical catalogues we focus on achieving 100% automation. For the layout oriented catalogues we focus on optimizing the workflow and using blackfilm-changes.