InDesign element tags and PDF

[Mike Witherell]

Hi gang,

Do you happen to know if InDesign 2023 supports certain PDF element tags?

Have they improved/added on the following tags?

• Part (not supported by ID)
• Code (not supported by ID)
• Form (yes)
• Formula  (not supported by ID)
• Reference (yes)
• Annot (not supported by ID)
• BibEntry (not supported by ID)
• Quote (not supported by ID)
• BlockQuote (not supported by ID)

Last time I checked, the above tags were not directly supported in InDesign.

Has that improved with InDesign 2023?

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

I'd bet that if anyone knows, it's @Bevi_Chagnon___PubCom_com.

[Mike Witherell]

Bevi knows pretty near everything! 🙂

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Well, especially with internal structure and tags that are key to accessibility, which is why I thought to send that ping.

[Bevi Chagnon - PubCom]

Hi guys!

Just back from holidays and got the ping <grin>

Wow, Mike, you opened up a can of worms!

• First, here's the list of tags for accessible PDFs per the PDF/UA-1 standard, along with a brief definition of how they're used: https://www.pubcom.com/blog/2020_05-02_tags/pdf-ua-tags.shtml  Note the spelling: accessibility tags are case sensitive, unlike other forms of tags in other structured document systems (like HTML). So that's BlockQuote, not Block Quote.
• I'm noting the term "directly supported in InDesign," which I think you mean "is available in the Export Tag" section of a paragraph style, which allows the user to set exactly what tag will be built into the exported PDF. If that's what you mean, then no, none of the tags in Mike's list are "directly" supported in InDesign, and no, there's been nearly nothing improved with InDesign for a few versions. (Don't get me started on that topic!)
• Some of the tags in the list are indirectly supported in InDesign, but that's controlled by how InDesign's built-in Export to PDF utility is programmed at the time. As of this writing, InDesign 2023 (18) exports using PDF Library 17.0. It's a bit dated: note that Adobe PDF Maker for MS Office uses PDF Library 22.3.58.
• Tags that InDesign indirectly creates (aka, automatically creates without user control) are:
  • All table tags
  • All list tags
  • All TOC tags
  • All hyperlink tags — <Reference> <Link> and <Link-OBJR>
  • Form tags

So Mike, that leaves out these tags: they are not available to InDesign users:

• Part
• Code
• Formula
• Annot
• BibEntry
• Quote
• BlockQuote

But we have a hack to get these tags into a PDF tag tree. It involves role mapping in Acrobat. Let me know if you want our guide on that.

[Mike Witherell]

Hi Bevi,

I edited my above question to indicate the tags you said are not supported. That leaves two: 

Form: is it supported directly within InDesign? Does it need to be typed any special way?

Reference: is it supported directly within InDesign? Does it need to be typed any special way?

Yes, I would love to read your guide. I ask this above question every 3 years or so in the hopes of keeping our notes accurate. Sometimes the accessibility improvements get put into InDesign with little or no fanfare. While I deal with Role Mapping as a work-around, I keep hoping for a next ID that doesnt need so much time-consuming hoops-jumping in Acrobat.

[Bevi Chagnon - PubCom]

<Form> is automatically built into the PDF for every form field in an InDesign layout. You don't need to do anything more than build the form correctly.

<Reference> is automatically built into the PDF where it's appropriate: Footnote citations that are in the layout using InDesign's footnote utility, and in TOCs built with InDesign's TOC utility.

... I keep hoping for a next ID that doesnt need so much time-consuming hoops-jumping in Acrobat.
By @Mike Witherell

Ha ha ha ha! You are so funny!

But seriously, we're able to get very compliant PDFs from our InDesign layouts. I still do graphic design and test various methods and techniques that end up in my books and classes. Most of our Indy-PDFs need only about 10-15 minutes of tweaking. Takes longer to adequately check them than it takes to fix them.

You know you're welcome in any of my classes at any time!

[Mike Witherell]

Most of our Indy-PDFs need only about 10-15 minutes of tweaking. Takes longer to adequately check them than it takes to fix them.

And that is precisely the problem I am trying to know and cure.

The essential problem is a tagging mechanism developed to an incomplete condition and then left for us to  figure out how to fix the incompletenesses in the opaque dialog boxes of Acrobat. Role-Mapping would be more useful if we could save presets within it that essentially caused it to always do the same thing to each next document. 10 additional minutes per each PDF document is a heavy time penalty in anyone's workflow. I continue to wish it was more streamlined than this. After all, InDesign tagging and Acrobat tagging come from the same one company that invented the whole matter.