manipulating headers / footers through API?

[Jakob Fix]

Hello,

I'm currently exploring the feasibility to modify/update what is
displayed in the running footer through an API client which reads
information from an initialization file, and updates the footer
accordingly, like this:

maker.ini
----------------8<----------------8<----------------
[MyInitSection]
initfile = TestInit.ini

TestInit.ini
----------------8<----------------8<----------------
[Publication1]
FooterCenter="DRAFT"
FooterBinding="January 2006"


Now, it can't be very hard to read these configuration settings from
within an API client.  However, what I'm currently struggling with is
how to access the footer of my document.  So far, I've found this:

FO_MasterPage
-> FP_PageFrame (which is a FO_UnanchoredFrame)
   -> FP_FirstGraphicInFrame and then
   -> FP_NextGraphicInFrame (apparently TextFrames are "graphics")
      -> use this object's objId with F_ApiGetText
      -> and then F_ApiDeleteText and F_ApiAddText

All this comes from reading the FDK reference and the FDK Guide. As I
said I'm investigating this because we may hire a programmer to do
this (and more), but I'm no C++ programmer myself, so testing out the
above would take me quite some time.

BTW, we're currently updating the information in the footer through
text insets located in a separate file (I guess that this may be your
first suggestion to "do it another way"), but we'd like to centralize
information like this in one easy-to-manage configuration text file
for each publication.

Thanks in advance.
--
cheers,
Jakob.