Creating a catalogue - in about a minute and a half • 6 January 2008 • The SnowBlog

Creating a catalogue - in about a minute and a half

          Here it is - the sock-knocking-off video. I have to admit I nicked the sock idea from the authors of my favourite book of the moment, A Designer's Guide to Adobe InDesign and XML  whose writing style had me hooting. They recommended moving to a warmer climate, like Florida, where you don't need to wear socks as yours will be flying off the whole time in astonishment at how cool using XML in Indesign can be. I heartily concur. Definitely worth buying if you have anything to do with publishing. 

 I didn't realise the text would be so small, so when I'm explaining about the XSL, these are the lines I'm talking about. 

< authorfirstname >< xsl:value-of select="Contributor/NamesBeforeKey"/ >< /authorfirstname>
< price >< xsl:value-of select="SupplyDetail/Price/PriceAmount"/ >< /price >

and later on, how to sort the records in the xsl by Category:

< xsl:sort select="BICMainSubject"/ >

I know this must seem ultra dull to some of you, but think of it this way. If you're a Snowbooks author, the time I'm saving by using XML wisely can be spent promoting your books. If you're a Snowbooks fan, the time I'm saving means I can spend more time working on the interesting extra bits that make Snowbooks stand out. If you're a customer of Snowbooks, the data you get on our books is likely to be as error free as is possible. Everyone's a winner. The only possible drawback is that making computers do all this work will result in them rebelling and declaring war on us, and then it will all go a bit Battlestar Galactica.  But it's a risk I'm willing to take. 
Emma