Working with variable data

Variable what?

Variable data is the concept where your document consists of elements that can be changed without having to work in the interface.
The most obvious example would be a business card, where name, e-mail, phone ... are to be changed for each co-worker.

Instead of changing the information in the document itself, you can define placeholders where the name, e-mail, ... reside, and give an easy way of typing in some fields.
The content of these fields is then placed in the document.

see ?Variable Data for more information on how to configure and use variable fields.

Input through a form

Input via a form is mostly used if you have a template document (e.g. businesscard) and you need to change some information in the document.
In this case you will have 1 "record" or 1 set of fields.

Input via a datasource

A dataset is used if you have 1 template, and more than one line of data.
E.g. if you have a productlist with prices and images for you products, and you need to make product-leaflets for all your products based on a template.
Then you would create a template, an read in the list of items (products) and create a multi-page document, or multiple documents, depending on your needs