Is XML and InDesign workflow a thing of the past?

InDesign has (at least) 4 distinct XML technologies.

XML import is one of them - very XML-ish, it even supports an antique version of XSLT, and DTDs (I never tried). Problem is that you better use it to fill in exactly structured templates with exactly tuned XML. Your XML will have to follow strict rules on whitespace - every space will show in document, and every return will produce a paragraph. Pretty-formatted (indented and wrapped) XML, ouch. If you have a complicated schema you may add post processing via scripts – they can navigate the imported data with XPath expressions and apply any changes. Insert comma separators into a list, or turn it into bulleted paragraphs? Have a table of umpteen sub-records, or better turn the single one into styled text? Choose a different template for the record with two images, or the extra long headline.

There are other import formats with schemas close to the InDesign internal formatting (e.g. specify a font), starting with tagged text – likely not your choice, too limited.

More recent formats map the scripting object model to XML elements and attributes, so you can address all aspects of the document with an outside processor.: ICML with a focus on text, IDMS snippets for page items, and IDML describes the entire document.

ExtendScript's E4X - an abandoned standard so unfortunately Adobe does not support it with the recent UXP Javascript. It is still very useful to access arbitrary XML with a smaller size, where all processing to bring the data into the document is performed in a script e.g. you bypass the XML "structure" features of the document.

UXP has DOM operations similar to modern web browsers, so you can use e.g. css selectors rather than XPaths. Besides, similar to ExtendScript you can perform any kind of post processing on the direct XML import.

From a workflow point of view, one big challenge can be to find a balance between all the processing stages especially if you intend to round trip.

Is your incoming data an export from a database? Is it using your own schema, or a specific standard? Is it XHTML or a subset?

You might need outside preprocessing e.g. to fill in text macros for elements that are only reference in your original data. An element that represents a status might turn into a paragraph within one template, or if you decide to switch to a different template it might turn into an image. Different text or image for different locales. Such choices may require layout information (does it fit the page) so you better provide all the data on import and display only a subset.

The post processing in the document may still not be sufficient, requring manual edits - tracking to squeeze a table cell, or fix a hyphenation mishap. You may want to preserve/manage those manual changes for later iterations, or return changes in the actual data (a fixed typo - thanks to the spell checker, the rewritten free text, the missing field as you finally see them in the layout) into the original data.

Even larger edits may destroy the document structure – the elements and their order. InDesign is no validating XML editor. I've seen projects add structure editors on top of InDesign, or limit edits dependent on the structure by use of plug-ins. Store snippets out of heavily modified text ranges. All doable.

Thank you for providing a direction towards resources. I will look into the various paths and resources. It seems the Adobe Experience seems to have all the resources to provide products and services that we provide to our customers.

I appreciate the discussion and prespectives presented by all contributors. This short discussion has provided many paths to consider.  I am grateful for all insights and perspectives. Thank you.

Hi @Sparrowhawk-AES, XML is still used quite extensively. It is often compared with JSON, because many modern APIs use JSON for configuration and data exchange. See this article for a reasonable comparison.

But Indesign doesn't read JSON, so JSON is only useful to Indesign if you have a plug-in or script/system that wants it. If you are using Indesign's native capabilities, with no scripts or plug-ins, I think XML is probably still your best bet (or use another tool altogether, as @James Gifford—NitroPress suggested). I'm no expert in this area—just adding what I know.

- Mark

All things considered, I'd look at XML into/out of FrameMaker. It was completely recast as an XML/SGML/DITA sort of tool about ten years ago. And while it's not as "artsy" as InDesign, it was more than capable of doing elaborate publication design even before the revision.