XML Publishing with Adobe InDesign

XML Publishing with InDesign CS

Dorothy Hoskins

Copyright © 2010 O'Reilly Media, Inc.

October 1, 2010

Abstract

Covers InDesign CS3–CS5

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.

In this book, we will be referring to InDesign CS5, and previous versions of the program back to CS3, generically as "InDesign CS". When there are important differences in the version's XML features, we will indicate for which version the screen shot or other information applies. Many features are not different from one version to another. Generally the screen shots will be taken ...