Weird client request: Printable Catalogue from Web Site

J

Jim Royal

A client has just made an odd request of me.

He wants to move his product catalogue online, for which I proposed an
ecommere package such as OSCommerce. So far so good. But then... he
wants to be able to print a hardcopy catalogue from the same database,
for those customers who do not have easy web access.

Since we're speaking of a few hundred products, this would have to be a
formatted document with several products per page. Intelligent
decisions would have to be made about pagination, such as not splitting
one product entry across pages.

Now, while this is not a technical impossibility, I can't see it as
advisable, as the resulting printed document would likely be rather
crude.

On the other hand, has anyone actually attempted anything like this?
What were your experiences, if you have?
 
F

Fat Sam

Jim said:
A client has just made an odd request of me.

He wants to move his product catalogue online, for which I proposed an
ecommere package such as OSCommerce. So far so good. But then... he
wants to be able to print a hardcopy catalogue from the same database,
for those customers who do not have easy web access.

Since we're speaking of a few hundred products, this would have to be
a formatted document with several products per page. Intelligent
decisions would have to be made about pagination, such as not
splitting one product entry across pages.

Now, while this is not a technical impossibility, I can't see it as
advisable, as the resulting printed document would likely be rather
crude.

On the other hand, has anyone actually attempted anything like this?
What were your experiences, if you have?

How about, instead of printing the catalogue, just dumping the whole site
onto CDRom, and distributing it that way?.....That way, those customers who
aren't online have access to the exact same information, presented in the
same way, as those who have internet access.....I know not everyone has
internet access, but almost everyone has access to a computer nowadays.....
Would he be open to that suggestion?......
 
F

Fat Sam

Travis said:
First, how is having a Web based printable version of the catalog on
the web helpful to those that cannot access the web?

Second, Why not just have a printable version (pdf?) for them to
download?

I think the OP meant his client would print out hard copies himself and
distribute them to non-internet-able customers......
 
T

Travis Newbury

Jim said:
A client has just made an odd request of me.

He wants to move his product catalogue online, for which I proposed an
ecommere package such as OSCommerce. So far so good. But then... he
wants to be able to print a hardcopy catalogue from the same database,
for those customers who do not have easy web access.

First, how is having a Web based printable version of the catalog on
the web helpful to those that cannot access the web?

Second, Why not just have a printable version (pdf?) for them to
download?
 
K

Karl Core

Jim Royal said:
A client has just made an odd request of me.

He wants to move his product catalogue online, for which I proposed an
ecommere package such as OSCommerce. So far so good. But then... he
wants to be able to print a hardcopy catalogue from the same database,
for those customers who do not have easy web access.

Since we're speaking of a few hundred products, this would have to be a
formatted document with several products per page. Intelligent
decisions would have to be made about pagination, such as not splitting
one product entry across pages.

Now, while this is not a technical impossibility, I can't see it as
advisable, as the resulting printed document would likely be rather
crude.

On the other hand, has anyone actually attempted anything like this?
What were your experiences, if you have?

Apologies to all for keeping the entire OP, but I think it most appropriate.

If IE would support print style sheets, this would be easy & quick to
provide for the client.
However, since IE sucks goat's balls, there is little you can do to reliably
give the client what he wants.
I will say that there's a lot you can do with PHP and PDF which might be a
viable solution. Google for "generate PDF with PHP" and see what that gives
you. You can probably generate a full catalog, all purdy and everything with
a PDF.

The bigger question, of course, is whether it is a worthwhile investment of
time & money for him (or her) to do that.
Usability studies (surveys, really) show that, if a customer is on the site,
they're also most likely to buy from the site as well. Meaning, Web users
who "shop" online (look at the products on the site rather than at the brick
& mortar store) are also more likely to buy online as well. They've chosen
the website as their preferred method of interacting with your business.
Because of this, they're probably less likely to *want* a print version of
the catalog.

Don't get me wrong, the client's not making an unreasonable request. To me,
its just a question of whether it is worth it to his bottom line to pay you
to develop this capability.
 
H

Hywel Jenkins

Apologies to all for keeping the entire OP, but I think it most appropriate.

If IE would support print style sheets, this would be easy & quick to
provide for the client.
However, since IE sucks goat's balls, there is little you can do to reliably
give the client what he wants.
I will say that there's a lot you can do with PHP and PDF which might be a
viable solution. Google for "generate PDF with PHP" and see what that gives
you. You can probably generate a full catalog, all purdy and everything with
a PDF.

http://www.fpdf.org/ - free, and bloody marvellous.
 
A

Augustus

Jim Royal said:
A client has just made an odd request of me.

He wants to move his product catalogue online, for which I proposed an
ecommere package such as OSCommerce. So far so good. But then... he
wants to be able to print a hardcopy catalogue from the same database,
for those customers who do not have easy web access.

Since we're speaking of a few hundred products, this would have to be a
formatted document with several products per page. Intelligent
decisions would have to be made about pagination, such as not splitting
one product entry across pages.

Now, while this is not a technical impossibility, I can't see it as
advisable, as the resulting printed document would likely be rather
crude.

I think you (and some of the replies to your post) have "this has to be a
webpage" where he is just going to hit "PRINT" in IE and voila he has his
catalogue...

If you stop to think outside the box you can see that this would be a pretty
simple thing to do... just create a seperate page like
"generatecatalogue.???" where he can go to the page, enter a
userID/password, click a button "create catalogue" and then after a couple
of minutes he gets a link to "download PDF catalogue"

Behind the scenes, your page "generatecatalogue.???" would access the
database and render a PDF file based on some kind of template for each pages
(how pictures are layed out, how content is layed out)

With abit of work you should be able to make this catalogue look like pretty
much any catalogue you could pick up from a retailer, including index and
table of contents... as I envision it, it would probably only be a 5-15 hour
job and should generate a nice little product at the end.
 
A

Andy Dingley

wants to be able to print a hardcopy catalogue from the same database,
for those customers who do not have easy web access.

Very common request, and fairly easy to do.

Produce your "content" in XML as an intermediate step. Then use XSL:FO
to make a print-quality catalogue that's as good as anything you might
want. As to the choice of XML Schema, then DocBook works and has easy
access to lots of ready-made XSL:FO tools. Another choice would be
XHTML This isn't such an obvious route, but it has the advantage that
if you build the web site in XHTML rather than HTML, you can take its
output directly into XSL:FO.
 
S

Sid Ismail

: He wants to move his product catalogue online, for which I proposed an
: ecommere package such as OSCommerce. So far so good. But then... he
: wants to be able to print a hardcopy catalogue from the same database,
: for those customers who do not have easy web access.
:
: Since we're speaking of a few hundred products, this would have to be a
: formatted document with several products per page. Intelligent
: decisions would have to be made about pagination, such as not splitting
: one product entry across pages.


Instead of the printed page, create a stiffy or CD to hand to those
non-Internet people. No pagination - just one long scroll. :)

Sid
 
T

Travis Newbury

Karl said:
Stiffy? I can create one of those in about 10 seconds if my wife walks
around the house in the right outfit.

Yea, me too. Especially the blue one she wears....
 
J

Jim Royal

Fat Sam said:
How about, instead of printing the catalogue, just dumping the whole site
onto CDRom, and distributing it that way?

Interesting idea, but some customers won't even have computers on site.
Besides, this starts getting into requiring tech support, which is far
from what the client wants.
 
J

Jim Royal

Karl Core said:
If IE would support print style sheets, this would be easy & quick to
provide for the client.

But you can't print out an entire web site at once without programmatic
help. A style sheet wouldn't do the job anyway.
The bigger question, of course, is whether it is a worthwhile investment of
time & money for him (or her) to do that.

Precisely. I'm leaning toward recommending that we produce a
traditional catalogue in addition to the web site, but with fewer
details. The web site would contain photos and complete details on
everything.
 
J

Jim Royal

Augustus said:
I think you (and some of the replies to your post) have "this has to be a
webpage" where he is just going to hit "PRINT" in IE and voila he has his
catalogue...

Nope. Not what the client asked for.
Behind the scenes, your page "generatecatalogue.???" would access the
database and render a PDF file based on some kind of template for each pages
(how pictures are layed out, how content is layed out)

Yep. This is what the client asked for.

With abit of work you should be able to make this catalogue look like pretty
much any catalogue you could pick up from a retailer, including index and
table of contents... as I envision it, it would probably only be a 5-15 hour
job and should generate a nice little product at the end.

I think you're a bit overly optimistic about the time required,
however. Two days of work to write a print-catalogue generation
program? It would take me a couple of weeks to produce and test.
 
J

Jim Royal

Andy Dingley said:
Very common request, and fairly easy to do.

Produce your "content" in XML as an intermediate step. Then use XSL:FO
to make a print-quality catalogue that's as good as anything you might
want.

Now this is an interesting idea. I shall give it some thought. Thanks!
 

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