Toronto InDesign User Group

Meeting Summary

Event Details

The meeting started with Jason giving a brief update on the status of the User Group. To date we have 686 registered members, with 102 members registered for this meeting. After Jason’s introductory notes, Sebastian started a basic introduction to XML. He explained the premise of XML, how it is structured much like a tree that starts with a root element. He compared XML to HTML, explaining that HTML is actually very “forgiving” in the syntax: that is, some typos and case sensitivities may be overlooked by a browser reading HTML. In contrast, XML is very strict, and will not allow for incorrect syntax. He emphasized that structure and order are very important in XML. After a brief introduction, Sebastian began an example of how XML can be used to tag data in InDesign. He showed how InDesign can visually display XML markup in a way that is much more practical than a text editor or a simple web browser. InDesign’s display of the XML markup is a great tool, especially for planning and troubleshooting the XML code. He showed how tagging the content of the page actually creates a database of XML data within InDesign. When a new instance of a story is created in InDesign, a new record of that story’s XML information is also created. These database records can be exported for parsing in XML parsing applications. After a short break, Sebastian showed a really cool shortcut tip that allows users to map XML tags to InDesign Styles. This is an amazing timesaver for tagging InDesign documents; however, it may cause the tags to come in with an incorrect order. Another way to offer greater control with the XML structure is to implement a DTD (Document Type Definition). A DTD file is a set of rules that dictates which XML tags can be used and in what capacity. In conjunction with this is the XML Validator, which determines if the XML conforms to the DTD structure. Sebastian demonstrated the ease of exporting XML data from FileMaker and importing that information into InDesign using the import XML feature of InDesign. The ins and outs of the import XML dialog box were examined in relation to the import options needed. When the import XML feature is combined with styles that have been pre-assigned to XML tags, we end up with automatically formatted text in the InDesign document. When compared to data merge using tab-delimited files, the XML structure is much more descriptive. By linking to the XML file when importing it, changes made to the XML file will be reflected in the InDesign document. Sebastian mentioned a great resource, A Designer's Guide to Adobe InDesign and XML: Harness the Power of XML to Automate your Print and Web Workflows.

Comments from the evaluation sheets

"I saw a lecture at Kodak last Wednesday on JDF and wondered how you control the workflow with XML as the main language between equipment controllers. This helps a lot."

"Fantastic overview of XML for anyone who is new to the language. The straight-forward, step-by-step explanation made this very easy to understand."

"Excellent - I've been coming to these meetings since July 2007 and enjoy them."

"Very practical, useful, and explained very clear!!"

"I like the way it was presented - the fact that it was brought to us as designers, not programmers."

"Excellent presentation. I can see an immediate application for me in my business. Thank you."

"Excellent as usual."

"Sebastian was very good (as always) and handled the material well."