XML to InDesign
XML, which is shorthand for Extensible Markup Language, was created to transport and store data. It shouldn't be confused with the more well-known, HTML, or hypertext markup language, which was designed to display data. In graphic design, XML helps designers to import and manage large volumes of data and format it in various software, including InDesign and Dreamweaver. In InDesign, a wealth of options exists to help you bring XML data into a document and lay it out with relative ease.
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XML in Action
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Probably one of the best examples to help you understand the importance of XML is the fillable PDF. When entering information into a PDF online and submitting that information to the website, XML is the language that helps the owner of that website make sense of the data. XML tags will for example, tell the site operators your name and email, and define all the numbers on the form from your age to your house number. So it provides structure to data, and data come in many forms: vector graphics, social networking applications and e-commerce transactions.
XML in InDesign
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XML was created so that highly structured documents could be shared in different applications and used over the Web. Adobe's InDesign is one of many graphic design software applications that can produce and use XML. You can create XML tags for content you produce in InDesign. For example, you can create a "heading" tag and then use that tagged data put to use on the Internet, in a database table or myriad other applications. What tags you create and how they are used is up to you. In addition, you can import an XML file into InDesign and have the program display and format the XML data as you wish.
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Importing XML into InDesign
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Importing XML into an InDesign document is fairly easy. Open you document and then from the "File" menu, select "Import XML." Doing so will bring up an XML structure panel. It contains each of the elements of the data in the XML file. You next need to associate an InDesign element with an element in the XML structure panel. You can then append or merge XML content. Append makes InDesign place the new content at the bottom of the structure panel, leaving it as is, in the form of elements. With a merge, InDesign compares the incoming XML content with the elements already in your document. When it finds a match, the imported data replaces the content in your document. So for example, if you have a newsletter in an XML file and want to place it into a new pre-tagged InDesign template, a merge will match tags for text body, captions, images, headlines. Next you drag those elements into the appropriate frames, which can be linked text frames through an entire document.
Map to Styles
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The tags in XML data are simply descriptions identifying the type of content in the data. They don't tell InDesign how to format that data. You therefore need to format imported XML content. A helpful way to speed this process is to map XML tags to your various preset styles, such as your "Character," "Paragraph," "Table" or "Cell" styles. This way, for example, every bit of data tagged "Author" for example will have the same format you've created for your bylines within the document.
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