By: Anne-Marie
December 21 2007 • 3:19 PM
InDesignSecrets Podcast 067
Listen in your browser:
InDesignSecrets-067.mp3 (15.5 MB, 33:48 minutes)
(or read the transcript)
- News: Two new InDesign books, Helvetica movie, InDesign Conference in Miami, Florida
- XML and InDesign: Overview, basics, when and how and why
- Obscure InDesign Feature of the Week: Formatted Only Once
Links mentioned in the Podcast:
Maivald and Palmer’s book: A Designer’s Guide to InDesign and XML
Powell’s book: Instant InDesign
Documentary movie, Helvetica
InDesign Conference (Miami, FL; Feb 26-March 1 2008)
We interview Cari Janssen about her XML project
Anne-Marie’s blog post on exporting HTML using XML tags
InData plug-in from Em Software
I listened intently at the XML portion and I was going along and thinking, ah I won’t bother with it. But Anne-Marie’s words at the end there inspired me and I am going to buy both books and get cracking on learning it.
Thanks
The whole “debate” about whether or not to invest in an XML workflow is a good one.
I find too many students have heard about XML and think it’s something they need to learn and use.
Sadly, these are the same students who rarely use a totally style-driven workflow for character and paragraph styles.
My feeling is that designers should be aware of what design limitations they could have when working with XML files.
For instance, there may not be room for certain design elements in a XML-structured catalog.
But those designers need not learn XML. They should pass their pages to the XML team for finished coding.
However, the decision to move to XML should be made in conjunction with rest of the XML team as defined in the podcast.
Very interesting Sandy. XML has me scared. I don’t know why. It just feels like something I should know. I have over 25 publications to get out next year and all our publications go onto our server for all our members. Apparently PDF was too hard for people to work with, so I spent a large chunk of last year converting them to HTML entwined with CSS. I have no idea what all that means, I just did what I was told.
I guess in a way I was hoping that XML could SMS (save my soul) basically stop me going crazy.
Would an XML workflow work for large publications that are updated every year?
We do need our publications to go on our website and I don’t have a lot of confidence in the guys that converted them for us last year.
I’ve created a homegrown XML workflow for my community newspaper, and it’s cut my page production time in about half. It also keeps me from having to update our Web site, since it’s generated FROM the Web site. Once you go down this rabbit hole, you’ll find no end of possibilities.
XML is a lot like algebra: It scares students (and many adults!) because it’s somehow too advanced for them. But when you break it down, it’s just a bunch of rules that need to be followed. Not scary at all.
On the other hand, as Sandee noted, many people aren’t ready to learn (or follow) even the basic rules about styles. Sigh.
Eugene, sure XML could help you in large pubs… as long as they are structured docs. But in my opinion, the best use of XML is for data/docs that get updated often, or where data needs to be repurposed into more than one format.
“So what is it exactly that you do…?” I get that question quite often, working in an in-house setting for a company which is completely unrelated to anything design! I often reply with, “Well…where should I begin…”
Anne-Marie and David, Thank you so much, I have learned so much, so quickly and been entertained as well. I have watched and read all that I can find online, that is free, about data automation concerning Adobe Illust. and ID. I have been working through the tutorial by Deke McClelland provided through the book, InDesign CS2 one-on-one. I am forced to work these tutorials using CS3. I am exporting the XML file from ID but am not getting any line breaks or indents in the code. I have tried viewing the XML file using Safari, BBedit, Firefox, ExtendScript Toolkit 2. I can get some color coding with a couple of those choices but no further luck with the breaks. Any ideas what I am doing wrong with my export?
XML sounds all well and good, but unfortunately, whenever my database is exported as XML, InDesign CS3 gives one of many cryptic errors, such as “Expected entity name for reference. Line: 32, Column:8″
Even more unfortunate is that the Adobe documentation and websites give little to no information about how the XML needs to be structured in order to be imported… any clues for us non-programmers who are just receiving XML files to import ? (I really can’t go out and buy a book)
Polly, the line breaks, indents, and other whitespace elements are usually just ignored in XML. That’s one of the strange parts of the format.
Dante, XML very rarely just works. That’s why we said it takes a team of people. Along with the team, there is usually a significant amount of training. I don’t mean to be obnoxious, but if you can’t even buy a book on the subject, I’m not sure XML is going to be a viable workflow for you.
becoming newly aware of hidden secrets of XML, thanks for the media.
Anyone know of a list of xml consultants/teams by geographical region? I’m in Boston, and want to know if the setup costs on a course catalog project would be justified.