Import Tags: Large Reference Book

[tephin]

I'm looking into updating the software my company uses for our yearly reference book (we still use Corel Ventura, last updated in 2001).

The book contains profiles for 2 to 3 hundred companies and each profile is formatted in a similar manner. The content for the book is exported from our database. The content export includes style tags that are read by Ventura, which makes formating each profile fairly easy.  I've included a sample profile for reference.

Is there way to set up InDesign to receive an import of pre-tagged content? Ventura is becoming less stable by the year and I need to find out how to get this book working on modern software. Thanks!

[David Popham]

That depends on what you mean by pre-tagged. InDesign can accept XML input as well as its own Tagged Text format for placing and formatting content.

There is also the potential for formatting that content using workflows that involve Find/Change with GREP or scripting (or a combination of the two), but it really depends on the structure of the content. An example of the tagged input would be helpful in order to provide better guidance.

[MW Design · Accepted solution]

Your best/easiest path is to download the ID tagged text documentation, have the person responsible for the database read it, understand it enough to change the current VP tagging to the style used by ID.

ID's tagging is far more verbose. QXP's is fairly straight-forward of a conversion from VP's style. So much so I use Em Software's tagged text plug-in which uses QXP-style tagged text into ID. I use it for both tagged text into ID and QXP. But, you can go from the database to ID's tag text format.

It's a bit of work, but once done, your present workflow will be very similar going from the database to ID. There will be some back and forth testing between the database output and the paragraph/character styles, etc.

Depending on your paragraph styles, there may be design changes required. For instance, if you use VP's "side by side" capabilities there is no corresponding paragraph type in ID. And you may find other styles not possible.

Best of luck, Mike

[Lola157F]

Hi,
I am currently converting Ventura publications to a JSON file structure.
In a second step, I then convert the JSON files into the INDD format.
For the best possible result I need all fonts used in Ventura and the help files for hyphenation and spelling.
For the conversion to InDesign the fonts to be used there are also needed.
If you provide me with test data, I will gladly provide a sample conversion.

Many greetings
Werner

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

[Lola157F]

I just see that you want to generate data for your book directly from a database in InDesign.

One possible way would be:
1. I generate a JSON template from an existing Ventura publication using my Ventura export module.
2. you use the JSON template for your data export
3. you then use my JSON import script to generate your book.

[Lola157F]

Sorry, I forgot:

Werner, Contact: https://www.weepee.de/

[tephin]

Thanks for the in-depth reply Mike! The Ventura tagging from the database is pretty clear, so I should be able to get that updated. The tags are also consistent throughout the book, so getting one profile solved will make the rest of the book pretty easy to update,

Chris

[MW Design]

You're most welcome, Chris.

It is pretty straight forward. I always prefer changing the database versus post-processing. But even then it can be handled by the multi-change script (or better, a small fee multi-change script that's available). That is, the VP tagged text can be brought in as-is, then the change script can be used to find the start tags, remove them and apply a paragraph and/or character style as it goes. Custom made scripts are also possible.

But like mentioned, especially when one's data is published X number of times a year. I also do similar insurance records in the several hundred per document (different industry though), it's best to just alter the tags at the dbase output stage.

Mike