CR9 used to print version of a book

[vbadmin]

I've got lots of books that I display online and I'm thinking about putting their content into a database. I want to be able to create a printable version of the book and I'm thinking that crystal reports could query the database a generate a print version of the book. Is this a bad idea to try to use crystal reports to do this kind of a thing or do people out there actually use crystal reports to do this? If not, what tool(s) would work better?

 

[synapsevampire]

The interesting part is getting it into a database.

You need to define what that means.

Crystal could generate books, though if you already have a book, why break it up into a database?

I would think that saving it as a PDF will be as close to a book format as you'll find as it requires special tools to RIP it (Distiller for one).

If it's in Word for instance, export it to PDF, then you can just point them to the PDF link, making it slightly more complicated for them to bastardize as their own.

If you're building a book from a database, that seems like the difficult way to maintain edits, etc.

Anyway, good luck with it.

-k

 

[vbadmin]

right now all the content is stored in static html pages and the print version is stored in a separate file, so maintaining edits is a pain because I've got duplicate data that I have to update. If I have the content in a database, then I can create one dynamic web page to display each page and have something like crystal reports pull out the data and format it for the print version. That way if I want to make a change to any of the content, I just change it in one location and it immediately takes effect on the web and paper version of the book.

Also, it's a very fast way to deliver new books. All I have to do is input the data for the next book into the database and it will already be available on the web and for print without any need of programming.