Re: updating price lists

[lsmalley@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Lester C. Smalley)]

| From Framers@FrameUsers.com Fri Sep 17 11:14:37 1999
| From: rinch@inficon.com
| To: Framers@FrameUsers.com
| Message-ID: <852567EF.0050204F.00@mail.inficon.com>
| Date: Fri, 17 Sep 1999 10:35:11 -0400
| Subject: updating price lists
| 
| I received this query from Sales:  "In an ideal world, when the product managers
| had an across the board price increase it would be lovely to go into a program
| and ask it to make the calculation and update all the pricing.  PageMaker was
| not created for an ideal world.  Can FrameMaker handle such a task and still
| allow me to layout the document for printing?"
| 
| Sales uses PageMaker to create the Price Books for our salespeople, but are
| willing to shift to FrameMaker. An example of what they want to do is as
| follows: One product line in the sales book has an across the board price
| increase of three percent. Sales wants to go into the document and in only one
| instance tell [FrameMaker?] to increase all prices relative to that product line
| by three precent, and have [FrameMaker?] automatically calculate all of the
| price increases for that product line by three percent.
| 
| This is far removed from anything I have ever tried to accomplish with
| FrameMaker. Is this possible, and if so, by what methodology?
| 
| Thank you,
| 
| Richard Inch
| Technical Documentation Manager
| Leybold Inficon
| East Syracuse, NY 13057

We were going to wait another week or so to make an announcement, but
INFOCON's TableMath tool can certainly help with this task, if you are
running FrameMaker/FrameMaker+SGML version 5.5.6 on either Windows or
Macintosh (Unix coming soon, older FM versions can be supported by
special request)

TableMath permits the user to select cells and then add or multiply up 
to 128 rows (or columns) at a time, and stores the result(s) in a list
(separate from the FM clipboard) that can be pasted back into the table
cells.  If the original selection included a final row/column that was
empty, the result(s) can be automatically pasted into the empty cells.
The list (i.e., results from the previous operation) may be included as
one operand in the next task. 

EXAMPLE: 

The users selects 3 columns by 28 rows of a table and from the TableMath
menu chooses "Add by Columns"

The list will have 28 results, each being the sum across the separate
rows of the three columns individual contents.
-----

Values may be in scientific notation (such as 1.024 E-5); and may include
either periods (.) and commas (,) as used in either European or American
numeric formats; leading plus or minus symbols, or currency indicators are
also permitted.

Straddled cells may be included, and can be used as a single value in 
the operation, used once for each row/column straddled, or as if the value
existed in every underlying cell.

Text only cells are ignored, and empty cells are treated as the identity
operand (0 for addition; 1 for multiplication) in the calculation.

Multiple paragraphs in a cell are errors. 

Many parameters of the program's operation are user-configurable by 
editing a simple FrameMaker table.

We could customize the standard functioning of the program to permit a
'constant' to be input by the user (such as 1.03) that would be applied
to the chosen operation (multiplication) to update the results.

An enhanced version (TableMath Pro) is being developed that will permit
'automatic' operations: Users can pre-define tasks (such as in any table
tagged "Price List" multiply columns 2, 3 and 4, then store the results
in column 5).

Users will still need to invoke TableMath actions manually - this is NOT
a 'dynamic update' feature but rather a utility intended to automate a
desirable capability lacking from the standard program.

For further information, contact SALES@INFOCON.COM or call 302-239-2942.

Sincerely, 

- Lester
------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Lester C. Smalley                   | email:  lsmalley@infocon.com
  Information Consultants, Inc.       | Phone:  (302) 239-2942 ext-13
  Hockessin, DE  USA 19707-0310       | FAX:    (302) 239-1712
--------------------------------------+---------------------------------
    * * Adobe Certified Expert -- FrameMaker and FrameMaker+SGML * *
INFOCON is an Adobe Solution Sales Provider and offers hardware/software
  dedicated to providing integrated office solutions for productivity.
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                         http://www.infocon.com/

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