🚀 go-pugleaf

Hi all,
I hope you will bear with me for several questions about using XML in InDesign. I have posted this in the InDesign forum, but someone thought there might be more XML experience over here in scripting. I really hope there is a solution short of learning scripting, however, as I am up to my ears in new programs right now. However, if that is the best solution, I'll take it on.

Our newsletter publishing group is switching over to InDesign, and we want to use the XML export feature to produce content for our Web site and also for the various vendors that we send content to (such as Lexis-Nexis, etc.). I am familiar with Pagemaker, and I am learning InDesign; plus I am familiar with the rudiments of XML, but there are a lot of gaps in my knowledge. I know HTML.

So far I have been able to set up XML tags in InDesign, use XMLSpy to create a schema, and produce well-formed XML (I am also just learning XMLSpy, so my brain is spinning). I am impressed with the way, when I load the XML tags in InDesign, they add paragraph styles of the same name. But here are some problems I've encountered:

1. PARAGRAPH TAGS: I have set up articles into two main parts: Head-with various subcategories such as Kicker, Subhead, and Byline; and Text-with subcategories for Bodytext and AuthorID. But I need to tag Breakers and BulletList, which are a part of Bodytext. It appears that the only way to do this is to tag every paragraph rather than just the breakers and bulleted text. Has anybody found another way? (Much to my dismay, the samples that came with InDesign did not include a paragraph series such as would be found in most periodicals or books.)

2. MORE ON PARAGRAPH TAGS: If I don't tag breakers and bulleted text, described in problem 1, but just keep Bodytext as a group of paragraphs, when I export it, there are no paragraph breaks. Instead there are boxes indicating unknown characters. However, when I look at it as plain text, there are line breaks between paragraphs, so it is exporting something there. Again, is it necessary to tag every paragraph? It seems like this would be very fat code. What I'm expecting, I guess, is something like the "brackets-and-letter-p" tags in HTML, but I don't know if this is how it is done in XML. Perhaps that is done in the XSL translation (haven't got to that part yet).

3. ABSTRACTS: I would like to tag the first paragraph of each article as an Abstract. I want it to remain a part of the article but also to be available as a separate item named Abstract in other uses. I fear this will have to be done in the translation, but would welcome advice.

4. TABLES: We have enormous numbers of tables, and the table feature in InDesign should be a real step forward. However, they don't export to XML. I can change the tables to text and export them; I seem to get just a space between columns. Is there any way to get the columns-and-rows formatting of HTML? For example, if I paste a Pagemaker table in Word and export to HTML, I get an HTML table. Can this be done with XML in InDesign?

5. MORE ON TABLES: I have read somewhere that tables can be exported to XML as CDATA (untagged text bringing in its own formatting). Does anybody know the mechanics of this? expecially as I am unable to tag the tables and thus add them to the XML structure of the file.

This is probably only the beginning, but any advice on these questions or other similar issues would be much appreciated. Also if there is somewhere else I should be posting this, please let me know.

Thanks, Janice