Creating InDesign Tagged Text via XSLT

Question

Hi, I am on Windows and using Oxygen XML Editor to convert XML to tagged text. When I place the text in InDesign, I get the Text Import Options dialog box.

I am specifying UTF-8 and using <UNICODE-WIN> as the first line of the file. If I copy and paste the content into a "reverse-engineered" tagged text file, I get the correct Import dialog box. I would like to be able to do this without having to copy/paste every time.

If I view the files in a hex editor, there is definitely a difference:

Oxygen generated:

Exported from InDesign as Tagged Text:

Here is a partial view of my XSLT stylesheet. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Jongware · Accepted Answer

That Tagged Text export from InDesign is not UTF-8, it is UTF-16.

I'm actually surprised you are able to re-import that file into InDesign even if you tell it this "is" UTF-8. InDesign must be smarter than that.

Set your XSLT to export UTF-16 should work. I use "encoding="utf-16le"" and it has worked fine for me on both Mac and Windows (never minding that "UNICODE-WIN" line at the top -- I just checked, I happened to have "UNICODE-MAC" and InDesign does not bat an eye even on Windows).

Dirk Becker · Answer

While you try UTF-8 in both UI and XSLT, that second hex dump appears to be UTF-16LE.

When matching it a look at the BOM may also help - e.g. why it is accepted even with your import options, but unfortunately you cropped out the first bytes from your screen shot.

Edit: After a second look, there is no BOM.

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