🚀 go-pugleaf

Natasha,

I've been thinking about this too.

Who would be initially tagging your text in XML? If it is your editors, they would need an XML editor. And someone will have to create your tags and define them in a DTD (sort of a dictionary of tags, that defines them). Sort of like setting up a database's field names, as I understand it.

Once you have a DTD, your your editor uses its tags to format your text as XML. Then it could be imported into whatever XML-compatible programs you are using.

Or, what I envision is creating DTDs for magazines, books, etc. in coordination with my clients that include the styles I need as a designer as well as the styles they need for content (there is some overlap), that I could use to export XML after a design layout is completed, since it is unlikely that most editorial folks would do a complete tagging for content and design styling.

I think what Phil is referring to is that XML was set up by folks who were not exactly design-sensitive. So, those of us who would like a DTD to contain design styling as well as content tagging are creating things as we go along.

I just participated in an XML seminar where I suggested that designers were a major powerhouse of tagging expertise that is going untapped. I'd happily map XML to para and character styles and back again to automate the layout process on books and magazines and provide clients XML for repurposing. The folks giving the class got what I was saying, and are thinking about it.

But, at the moment, InDesign only supports paragraph styles, which I don't find is rich enough for it to work yet. Hopefully InDesign 3 will provide a better environment.

In the meantime, there's plenty to read on the Web about XML. Learning the basic concepts like DTD, XHTML, XSLT etc. will help you understand what it's all about.