• Extended Contents

  Page 3

• About This Book and InDesign CS

  Page 5

• A Brief Foray into Structured Content (a.k.a. XML)

  Page 6

• + InDesign XML Publishing: College Catalog Case Study

  Page 9

  • Data-like Content Example: The Course Description XML

    Page 11

  • + Topical Content: The Handbook XML

    Page 13

    • Iteration and refinement

      Page 15

    • Net results: vast improvements in understanding and speed

      Page 15

• + Importing XML

  Page 17

  • + Doing It Adobe’s Way: The Placeholder Approach

    Page 17

    • Model the XML you want

      Page 18

    • Importing XML into placeholders

      Page 22

    • An aside: the scary Map Styles to Tags dialog message

      Page 29

  • + Mingling non-XML and XML content in a text flow

    Page 31

    • Exporting XHTML when XML is in your InDesign file

      Page 33

  • + Doing It Your Way: Using the Options for Your Own Process

    Page 35

    • Import XML using only Merge, no other import settings

      Page 35

    • Linking to external XML files

      Page 35

    • Creating text flows for the imported XML

      Page 36

    • The importance of “document order” for imported XML

      Page 36

  • + Understanding InDesign’s XML Import Options

    Page 39

    • Using “Clone repeating text elements”

      Page 40

    • Importing only elements that match structure

      Page 41

    • Avoiding overwriting text labels in the placeholder elements

      Page 43

    • Deleting non-matching structure, text, and layout components

      Page 45

  • + Importing Images

    Page 47

    • Inline image imports

      Page 48

• + Tagging XML in InDesign

  Page 49

  • The Case for Tagging Content: Why You Need XML

    Page 49

  • Tagging for Import

    Page 50

  • + Tagging for Iterative XML Development

    Page 50

    • Working without an initial DTD

      Page 50

• Looking Forward: InDesign as an XML “Skin”

  Page 51

• + Exporting XML

  Page 53

  • Marking Up (Tagging) Existing Content for XML Export

    Page 53

  • + The Special Case of InDesign Tables (Namespaced XML)

    Page 53

    • Examining the table

      Page 54

  • + Tagging Images as XML in InDesign

    Page 59

    • Image Options in the Export XML Dialog

      Page 59

• + Validating XML in InDesign

  Page 61

  • Why validate?

    Page 61

  • + How to Validate XML in InDesign

    Page 61

    • Loading a DTD and getting the correct root element

      Page 62

  • + Authoring with a DTD

    Page 62

    • Dealing with validation problems

      Page 63

    • Occurrence and sequences of elements

      Page 66

    • Validating outside of InDesign

      Page 67

    • Duplicating structure to build XML

      Page 68

    • Cleaning up imported XML content

      Page 68

  • + Fast and Light Credo: Develop Now, Validate Later

    Page 69

    • Iterating the information structure and DTD

      Page 69

• + What InDesign Cannot Do (or Do Well) with XML

  Page 71

  • The 1:1 Import Conundrum

    Page 71

  • Bad Characters

    Page 71

  • + Inscrutable Errors, Messages, and Crashes

    Page 72

    • The Devilish DTD suggestions

      Page 72

    • Exporting from the element with the included DTD will not be valid

      Page 72

    • Don’t make InDesign “think” too hard on import or export with XSL

      Page 72

  • InDesign CS5: XML Structure option for exporting XHTML

    Page 73

• + Advanced Topics: Transforming XML with XSL

  Page 74

  • An Aside Regarding Scripting InDesign and XML Rules-based Publishing

    Page 74

  • XSLT for Wrangling XML; XML Scripting for Automating XML Publishing

    Page 74

  • XSL: Extracting Elements from a Source XML File for a New Use

    Page 76

  • XSL: Getting the Elements to Sort Themselves

    Page 77

  • XSL: Getting Rid of Elements You Don’t Want

    Page 79

  • Creating Wrappers for Repeating Chunks

    Page 81

  • Making a Table from Element Structures

    Page 85

  • Upcasting Versus Downcasting

    Page 88

  • Upcasting from HTML to XML for InDesign Import

    Page 92

  • Downcasting to HTML

    Page 93

  • Generate a Link with XSLT (Not Automated)

    Page 99

  • + Adding Useful Attributes to XML

    Page 100

    • A general formula for adding attributes

      Page 101

    • Generating an id attribute for a div

      Page 101

    • Use of the lang attribute for translations

      Page 102

    • Creating an image href attribute

      Page 102

  • A Word about Using Find/Change for XML Markup in InDesign

    Page 103

• A Brief Note about InCopy and XML

  Page 104

• A Brief Note about IDML and ICML

  Page 106

• + Summary

  Page 109

  • InDesign Resources

    Page 111

  • XML Resources

    Page 111

  • XSLT Resources

    Page 111

  • Acknowledgements

    Page 111

From Adobe InDesign CS2 to InDesign CS5, the ability to work with XML content has been built into every version of InDesign. Some of the useful applications are importing database content into InDesign to create catalog pages, exporting XML that will be useful for subsequent publishing processes, and building chunks of content that can be reused in multiple publications.

In this Short Cut, we'll play with the contents of a college course catalog and see how we can use XML for course descriptions, tables, and other content. Underlying principles of XML structure, DTDs, and the InDesign namespace will help you develop your own XML processes. We'll touch briefly on using InDesign to "skin" XML content, exporting as XHTML, InCopy, and the IDML package. The Advanced Topics section gives tips on using XSLT to manipulate XML in conjunction with InDesign.