XML import/export in inDesign

Hello,

I am new to inDesign so please bear with me if I am asking something basic. I have been searching for an answer on Google, but could not find it. Here's what I am trying to do:

We have a lot of existing inDesign files in our company. Our intent is to manage the individual components of these files in a third-party content management system. The CMS uses XML like most other systems.Since inDesign has a lot of built in XML features, I decided to try it out in a sample file (none of our existing inDesign files have XML tags). I created tags and manually tagged the content. After this, I was able to export the content to an XML file. Great so far.

The question is, can I export the layout and style information also? If so, can this be extracted to a separate file, maybe another XML file? The reason I am asking is that if I store the content XML along with layout and style info in the CMS, I should be able to use these to open a new inDesign session, import the layout information and then import my XML content file and it should display with all formatting and style intact. Is this possible?

thanks for your time and help.

XML import/export in inDesign

If you are using InDesign CS4, you can export/import the IDML (InDesign Markup Language) format which is an XML representation of the entire document - both layout and content. It's actually a zip-compressed file which, when decompressed, results in a standard folder/file structure with more or less human-readable XML.

Previous versions of InDesign had the INX (InDesign Interchange) format which was designed to make it possible to open InDesign content in an older version of the application. While it is an XML format, INX was not documented, nor was it supported by Adobe for purposes such as the one you are describing. With the introduction of IDML, Adobe officially supports this sort of workflow. Start by looking here:

Adobe InDesign CS4 IDML ReadMe

XML import/export in inDesign I should be able to use these to open a new inDesign session, import
the layout information and then import my XML content file and it
should display with all formatting and style intact Tags and Styles will not co-exist in an XML file,

Peter, thanks for the info, I am not to familar with IDML but will certainly look into it.

Thanks, this is good info.

I tried an export and was able to reimport succesfully. But, when I open the IMDL archive file, I see a lot of folders and files (Master spreads, resources, spreads etc.). It looks like I need to store this entire IMDL file in our CMS. That's ok, I can do that, but I am not sure if this works. Here's what I tried:

- I imported the IMDL file into a new inDesign session. This showed my content correctly formatted.

- I made a change to the exported XML file that I had created earlier from the ''export to XML'' command. Such changes will be done through the CMS system using workflows.

- I imported this file and used ''File-%26gt;import XML'' and selected ''Merge Content''. In the next dialog, I selected ''Only import elements that match existing structure'' and ''Do not import contents of whitespace-only elements''.

- This did not bring in my changes as I thought it would. The styles were also screwed up.

I may be doing something wrong, though. Will try again next week.

thanks

I was not necessarily suggesting mixing InDesign's xml import capability with IDML.

Rather, I think you might want to store the IDML in your CMS (probably after de-compressing it), and then manage the content in the ''story'' elements it contains (as well as references to images if necessary).

As I said, IDML is ''more or less'' human-readable - i.e., it is readable (unlike INX) but nonetheless rather complex. But, may be worth devoting the effort to understanding it for your purposes. You are interested in managing both layout and content separately from one another, and IDML does that rather neatly...

Thanks a lot. I will give this a try.