• About This Book and InDesign CS2/CS3

  Page 3

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

  Page 4

• + InDesign XML Publishing: College Catalog Case Study

  Page 7

  • + Data-like Content Example: The Course Description XML

    Page 9

    • +

      Page 10

      • Data exported as XML

        Page 10

      • Modeling the structure for the import XML

        Page 11

  • + Topical Content: The Handbook XML

    Page 11

    • +

      Page 11

      • Evaluating the handbook text for structure

        Page 11

      • Modeling the structure as a set of topics

        Page 12

    • Iteration and refinement

      Page 13

    • Net results: vast improvements in understanding and speed

      Page 14

• + Importing XML

  Page 15

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

    Page 15

    • + Model the XML you want

      Page 16

      • Get some structure into InDesign

        Page 16

      • Create placeholders for XML elements

        Page 17

      • Creating test XML

        Page 18

    • + Importing XML into placeholders

      Page 20

      • Adding style to the XML elements

        Page 21

      • Mapping styles to tags

        Page 22

      • Importing the "real" XML file

        Page 24

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

      Page 26

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

      Page 27

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

    Page 29

    • + Import XML using only Merge, no other import settings

      Page 29

      • Using Append

        Page 30

    • + Linking to external XML files

      Page 30

      • External updates on Open and using the Links palette

        Page 30

    • Creating text flows for the imported XML

      Page 31

    • + The importance of "document order" for imported XML

      Page 31

      • Rearranging XML elements in the structure pane

        Page 31

      • Fixing up structure in the Story Editor

        Page 32

  • + Understanding InDesign's XML Import Options

    Page 33

    • Using "Clone repeating text elements"

      Page 35

    • Importing only elements that match structure

      Page 36

    • Avoiding overwriting text labels in the placeholder elements

      Page 37

    • Deleting nonmatching structure, text, and layout components

      Page 39

  • + Importing Images

    Page 40

    • Inline image imports

      Page 41

• + Tagging XML in InDesign

  Page 42

  • The Case for Tagging Content: Why You Need XML

    Page 42

  • Tagging for Import

    Page 43

  • + Tagging for Iterative XML Development

    Page 43

    • Working without an initial DTD

      Page 43

• + Exporting XML

  Page 44

  • Marking Up (Tagging) Existing Content for XML Export

    Page 44

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

    Page 44

    • Examining the table

      Page 45

  • + Tagging Images as XML in InDesign

    Page 49

    • Image Options in the Export XML Dialog

      Page 50

• + Validating XML in InDesign

  Page 51

  • +

    Page 51

    • Why validate?

      Page 51

  • + How to Validate XML in InDesign

    Page 51

    • Loading a DTD and getting the correct root element

      Page 52

  • + Authoring with a DTD

    Page 52

    • Dealing with validation problems

      Page 54

    • Occurrence and sequences of elements

      Page 56

    • Validating outside of InDesign

      Page 57

    • Duplicating structure to build XML

      Page 58

    • Cleaning up imported XML content

      Page 59

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

    Page 59

    • Iterating the information structure and DTD

      Page 60

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

  Page 61

  • The 1:1 Import Conundrum

    Page 61

  • Bad Characters

    Page 62

  • + Inscrutable Errors, Messages, and Crashes

    Page 62

    • The Devilish DTD suggestions

      Page 62

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

      Page 63

    • Don't make InDesign "think" too hard on import or export with XSL

      Page 63

• + Advanced Topics: Transforming XML with XSL

  Page 63

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

    Page 63

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

    Page 64

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

    Page 65

  • XSL: Getting the Elements to Sort Themselves

    Page 67

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

    Page 69

  • Creating Wrappers for Repeating Chunks

    Page 71

  • Making a Table from Element Structures

    Page 72

  • Upcasting Versus Downcasting

    Page 76

  • Upcasting from HTML to XML for InDesign Import

    Page 80

  • Downcasting to HTML

    Page 81

  • Generate a Link with XSLT (Not Automated)

    Page 88

  • + Adding Useful Attributes to XML

    Page 89

    • A general formula for adding attributes

      Page 89

    • Generating an id attribute for a div

      Page 90

    • Use of the lang attribute for translations

      Page 90

    • + Creating an image href attribute

      Page 91

      • Pathing to images

        Page 92

  • A Word about Using Find/Change for XML Markup in CS3

    Page 92

• Summary

  Page 93

• + Resources

  Page 93

  • InDesign Resources

    Page 93

  • XML Resources

    Page 94

  • XSLT Resources

    Page 94

  • Acknowledgements

    Page 94

From Adobe InDesign CS2 to InDesign CS5, the ability to work with XML content has been built into every version of InDesign. What in the (real) world could you do with XML if you understood how it works in 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. The Advanced Topics section gives tips on using XSLT to manipulate XML in InDesign.