December 2003 Edition
Feature Spotlight: Virtual Ticket Production Pack 2.5
Q&A with Technical Support: Efficient Notifications
Smart Tip of the Month: Creating Form Templates with MetaScript
Third Party Software: VMWare Workstation
Support Bookshelf: SQL In Three Days
Feature Spotlight
Virtual Ticket Production Pack 2.5
The recently released Virtual Ticket Production Pack 2.5 provides support for the Mac OS X native QuarkXPress 6.0. Virtual Ticket Production Pack 2.5 consists of two components which allow Virtual Ticket to work directly with the Macintosh versions of QuarkXPress and Adobe Illustrator. QuarkXPress 6.0 users can now take advantage of powerful features including:
- Generate full-size, multi-page extended previews which can be stored in the database and viewed within Virtual Ticket.
- Drag and drop images and text files from Virtual Ticket to a QuarkXPress document.
- Automatically lookup job tickets in Virtual Ticket.
- Plus, much more!
For more information, visit: http://www.meta-comm.com/customers/docs
Q&A with Technical Support
How can I send a Virtual Ticket notification when a field value has changed?
In the Events and Actions area of Virtual Ticket Administrator, notifications can be configured to send other system users messages when an event has occurred. A type of notification that is commonly misconfigured is the notification for a changed field value. For instance, suppose you have a popup menu field on your form called Status which reflects the current job status. The production manager would like to be notified whenever the value of this field is changed. The mistake which is commonly made is to create a different notification for each value contained in the popup menu. A lot of work can be saved by making the following condition for one notification:
new Status not equal old Status
An item representing the “old” state of every character field can be found in the condition window by clicking the arrow to the right of the value field and choosing the “old” field from the list. This type of condition will allow you to compare the new value of the field with the old value.
For more information, visit: http://www.meta-comm.com/customers/docs
Smart Tip of the Month
Creating Form Templates with MetaScript
Creating Virtual Ticket templates with MetaScript can save time when filling out new tickets. This month’s tip shows how to use a simple MetaScript to make multiple templates for a form and switch between them with a popup menu.
The example below uses an elementChanged event listener to watch the field named “Template”. When the value of Template is changed, new values are placed into the fields listed in the script. This allows for templates to be created for a form and changed at any time.
Form.addEventListener("elementChanged", GetTemplate);
function
GetTemplate(aEvent)
{
if("Template" == aEvent.targetName){
if(Field( 'Template' ) == "Type 1")
{ SetField("Preflight_Check", 1);
SetField("Artwork", "Electronic Files");
SetField("Output", "Output Loose");
SetField("Seps", "CMYK");
}else
{
if(Field( 'Template' ) == "Type 2")
{
SetField("Preflight_Check", 1);
SetField("Artwork", "Electronic Files");
SetField("Output", "Output Paginated");
SetField("Seps", "Spots");
}else
{
if(Field( 'Template' ) == "Type 3")
{
SetField("Preflight_Check", 1);
SetField("Artwork", "Plate Ready Film");
SetField("Output", "Output Paginated");
SetField("Seps", "CMYK");
}
}}
}
}
Third Party Software
VMWare Workstation
VMWareWorkstation is a virtual machine software that provides users with the ability to install multiple Windows and Unix environments on the same computer. VMWare provides system administrators with a tool for testing and reproducing problems without the need for multiple test computers. Need to test a software package in Windows 98, 2000, or XP before deploying it to your users? Simply open your VMWare Workstation, choose the desired virtual machine and test.
For pricing and additional information visit: http://www.vmware.com
Support Bookshelf
SQL in Three Days Jose A. Ramalho
This is a SQL book for users who are in need of a beginner reference for the SQL language. The book provides SQL examples and step-by-step lessons plus it provides a section to differentiate between SQL software packages such as Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle. Once lessons are completed, the reader can take short tests to verify the skills they just learned.
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