Getting website data into Adobe InDesign

Question

I'd like our magazine team to be able to download website data in a file that Adobe InDesign can read. They can then import/open the file, make a few tweaks, and cut out a vast deal of repetitive manual labour (they currently use copy&paste for a few hours).

After a brief Google I note that v2 of InDesign can import/export XML so perhaps that is my best bet? Are there any alternatives, and can anyone offer any advice on them?

I am using a PC, and the magazine team are on Macs; testing will be tiresome I fear.

The data we wish to format is fairly simple - a title followed by a short chunk of text (repeated about 50 times, say). I'll ask about importing images later.

Thanks for your help. I will return to Google now, but it would be great if anyone can point me in a more specific direction first!

Answer 1

Some other stuff that I found myself:

Blog about XML import which mentions XSL and some steps you should take in the process

Adobe InDesign CS3 and XML : A technical reference

Answer 2

There is a xhtml to idml (indesign markup language) xsl template in the latest indesign sdk. You can start with that to help you format your idml output.

Here is a link to the sdk: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/indesign/sdk/

Download the "products" version. The xsl file is in this path in the zip file: devtools/sdktools/idmltools/samples/icmlbuilder/xsl/icml.xsl

Because of the mac issue, you can have them 'save' a xhtml file to a shared directory, you can then create a utility program to watch that directory and transform the saved files to an output directory.

Otherwise, there is a firefox add-on to transform xml files called XSL Results: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5023

I have not used it myself but it appears it could do the job of transforming the xhtml to idml for you on a mac...

Answer 3

In Indesign create a sample of what you would like to automate. Using character and paragraph styles.

Select the sample, and Go to File | Export .

Open this file in a text editor. This will give you the basic structure you are trying to create. You can use whatever tech you like to fill it in..

Then once you have saved the snippet. You can drag the file onto an Indesign page to create the new item.

Answer 4

I'm using InDesign's Javascript to import data from mysql database into InDesign. There are some custom-made functions that place text and images, having arguments like page no, coordinates, paragraph style's name etc. Then there are many (1000+) calls to these functions, generated by php script that takes data from db and calculates pages and coords. After running this Javascript, it takes few seconds to place everything exactly where needed.

I don't know if latest versions of InDesign have more possibilities but, having that question with InDesign CS, I wasn't able to create automatically those 1000+ placeholders' objects I needed, so I found another way...