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_Nate_Battles_
Participant
September 24, 2008
Question

XML and InDesign

  • September 24, 2008
  • 1 reply
  • 396 views
Hello,

I just started working with InDesign and I have some questions. Ideally I would like to use InDesign as a scriptable WYSIWYG platform that will compile and XML doc and indicate the (x, y) position of artwork and text. I make educational items that in turn go into Flash that use an XML doc. What I will have is basically 5 pieces of art (1 question and 4 responses) I have access to the art in all these formats (Quark, Ai, eps). I would like to place the artwork on my InDesign stage, move it around where I want and export that as an XML doc reflecting the position of the artwork in (x, y) coordinates. I have older XML files that I've used a horribly slow and tedious way of positioning artwork. Can I use one of these older XML files and make it a generic template for use in InDesign?

Thanks,

Nate
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1 reply

G
GagnonEric
Known Participant
September 24, 2008
From what i know, there is no support of geometry information in the xml structure (wich can be handled trought the user interface).

Even the support for style attributes mapping at import is a bit underdocumented and i dont even talk about tables! It's something that could be done with the inx format wich is xml based, but it's not a trivial task.

I have a project where i had a script to read the structure and associated page item to export a XML containing the text and geometry information.... but generated xml was to be used in a flash application, not to be reloaded in Indesign...

I did a search on this a while ago: third party support for roundtripping (indesign/xml/database). What was available was not answering my needs, but it could be good for you (by exemple go see http://www.easypress.com/. Do a search (in the forum/google) as there are other technology offering!).

More long term, you can keep a eye on flash interchange format and other new technologies(http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2008/03/flash_moving_to.html) as it could be usefull in adressing such scenario.

Eric
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