InDesign: Creating a "dynamic" template workflow

[adamstradovnik]

Greetings,

I have a bunch of questions to which I hope someone can provide the answers to.

TLDR;

- a developer / not in any way proficient with InDesign (only know the basics and basic scripting)

- trying to automate the tv listings part of our magazine

- tv listing made out of a 3x6 grid (3 rows / 6 columns)

- have about 42 templates (indt) for each day of the week - not ok

- need "dynamically" generated templates that would allow for a different user defined grid display every time (think tetris placement)

- Google photo link for an example of a user-set grid layout sketch ( https://photos.app.goo.gl/DYZ7MvHzhZ2j8MrY7 )

  - sketch of 2 user defined grid styles

  - available block sizes are (1/6th, 2/6th, 4/6th and 1 whole of a row width)

- searching for methods and resources that would explain how I can go about that

Detailed description:

Sometime ago, our company, which primarily deals with media (news, magazines, etc.) decided it wanted to somewhat automate the generation of a part of their magazine, specifically the TV listings.

I have successfuly managed to create a web-app that creates InDesign importable XML documents, from an outside database that we receive. The app uses pre-defined indesign template documents (.indt) for which it generates the correct XML structure and data. Currently we have about 2+4 templates a day for each day of the week (so all in all, 42 template documents).

The majority of the templates work on a grid of 3 by 6 (3 rows / 6 columns) into which the event content is then placed varied by size (events can be 1/6th, 2/6th, 4/6th and a whole row wide).

The problem arose when the client wanted a dynamically created grid for each day of the week.

Since we can not tell our designers to create a brand new template for each possible grid permutation, I hope someone on this forum knows of a way that can be solved programmaticaly.

Since I am primarily a developer, and haven't got much experience with InDesign, I am left with a blank, since I do not even know where to start to solve this problem.

Ideally our app would allow the user so manually set the grid that he desires (sort of like placing lego blocks or creating a puzzle with preset blocks) - and later on the system would create a template out of the user defined grid.

Now as far as I could tell we would probably have to use something like Adobe InDesign Server?

Also could we use the "parts" of our existing templates as some kind of a generation block?

I have absolutely no clue as to how to go about generating different template layouts from a custom layout, or which systems to use.

Any tips, points in the right direction, or resource links would be greatly appreciated.

[Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com]

- need "dynamically" generated templates that would allow for a different user defined grid display every time (think tetris placement)

Which user do you mean? The graphic designer or your end-user (audience)?

Suggestion: Have you looked at the service/programming Typefy does? They are the best programmers on the planet for this kind of work. https://www.typefi.com/

[adamstradovnik]

The "user" in this case is the person responsible for the tv listing (the content people).

As I stated above, we don't want (our designers do not desire) to create a brand new template layout for every possible grid layout day after day (as you can imagine they would be in the hundreds), also, layouts can change depending on the daily collection of movies and events (sometimes they want to make a movie bigger (4/6th of a grid and make the rest smaller, if there are more prevalent movies in a day they might want to expand more so for example, make a movie 4/6th of a width, then place another on 2/6th, and repeat that for all 3 rows), so I am looking into ways how I could possibly automate that process from a drawn grid inside an app to a template. 

We already have predefined templates, so the look is set, I would only need a way to generate or place frames on the grid inside the template dynamically, based on how the "user" mentioned above has specified inside our application.

Hope I explained it a little more.

As for outsourcing, we are (or rather our magazine dept. is) currently using an outsourced program already, but since the prices have risen, our company is looking for a way that we could keep it in-house. But as with any information it is greatly appreciated, I will still look into what they offer.

[Monoguapo]

Did you find solution?

[Derek Cross]

Kris at Rorohiko is brilliant at this kind of thing: https://www.rorohiko.com/wordpress/custom-development/