I'm (very slowly) writing a Variable Data Publishing application. The idea is to merge a graphical template and a database to create personalized documents (kinda like a mail-merge but much more advanced). I'm a graphic designer teaching myself Java so I can create an app that fills in the vast inadequacies of the programs I have to use for this. So far, I've got most of the *basic* functionality down. You can create a document, add pages, create content boxes and fill them with text or images, load a csv file, put placeholders in the text boxes that are replaced by database content and output a composite pdf. I'm using swing for the gui and the itext library for the pdf output. Like I said, though, I'm a graphic designer not a professional programmer and though my code works I'm pretty sure I could be doing some things much more efficently. I'm not asking for someone to write the program for me, I'd just like another set of brains with possibly some more experience than I to assist me. If you'd like to help, the project is on Sourceforge.net under the name 007Designer. Any help, even a suggestion or a couple lines of code to do something better, would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!