Mail merge (MM) has *four modes*. The modes 1-3 are directly exposed to the
user via different GUIs. The modes are:
1. FILE = saves the result as documents
2. PRINTER = directly prints resulting documents
3. EMAIL = sends results as individual emails
4. SHELL = returns an internal document shell for further programming
There is one property, which changes the overall behaviour of these modes:
*bCreateSingleFile*. This is the primary controller of the mail merge source
code workflow, as it affects all modes!
This also has timing constraints: for individual files the result can be
defined in advance, while further processing of the single result can just
be done after the merging. It mainly affects printing and the generation
of huge (1000+ datasets) combined non-PRINT merge results. A valid
combined document has to follow constraints, which are already met by
individual documents, as these are just modified copies.
LO currently has five working combinations of mode and *bCreateSingleFile*
The others, ''PRINTER+false'', ''EMAIL+true'' and ''SHELL+false'', are currently not
implemented. But the list contains implementation proposals for them.
* Mode: FILE
** false: Saves each merged document as an individual file. The file name can
be selected from a database column!
** true: Saves a combined file of concatenated documents. Each document starts
with a new / reset page style. Depending on the page style this inserts
hidden blank pages
* Mode: PRINTER
** false: *not implemented*. This could generate individual print jobs, which could be grouped on some
platforms for easier abortion (needs verification!). All print options
affect only the individual document! Printing could start after the first
document is generated.
** true: Generates a single print job. All print options affect the combined
document! This especially effects the results of reverse and N-UP printing.
Printing can just start after all documents are generated.
* Mode: EMAIL
** false: Each document can either be used as the email body (html or txt) or
be attached to a general email text. The emails are extracted from a DB
column, which must be provided!
** true: *not implemented*. Could send the combined document to a single
email address.
* Mode: SHELL
** false: *not implemented*. Instead of a single shell this could return a
sequence of shells for the individual documents.
** true: Returns the shell of the generated document. This is mainly
interesting for programmers. The document is just generated internally.
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