On Tue, Feb 11, 2003 at 09:49:47AM -0500, Elburn@aol.com wrote:
/_A friend of mine has an application where he needs to do a mail merge.  The 
/_kicker is that each letter must have a diff signature based on the contents 
/_of a merge field.  The signature is a graphic file and there are over a 
/_thousand of them.
/_
/_He may be willing to pay a consulting fee.  At this time he is using WINDOWS 
/_this could be a good time to start him on linux if Wordstar will do this, he 
/_has been unable to do it using MSWORD, however if wordstar can't do it but 
/_you know how to do it in word would still want to talk to you. 
/_

Seems to me that the best way to tackle this is in
baby steps. Stuff the information in a database 
(e.g MySQL, PostgreSQL) and then just link up via
odbc. MS Word does a fairly decent job on mail merges.

Here's the kicker: You need a database server :-)
I would plop a low end box in his home/office 
with MySQL/Apache/PHP installed. Install something like
phpmyadmin so as he can admin/manage any databases he/she may 
create.

Maybe I'm all wet here,  but anytime you have
"over a thousand" of something, you can't go wrong
stuffing that something into a database in order
to manage it better.

I'd like to see this thread remain on the list
as I think it is important everyone has the opportunity
to contribute/listen to solutions to everyday 
problems/applications.

v/r
-Mike