🚀 go-pugleaf

I'm still trying to figure out the various ways that I can use InDesign to
produce a fancy formatted printed catalog and a much less fancy html web
page, both with the same information.  This is not for me, it's for a
graphics designer I'm trying to help.

The problem is that the web page needs to be compatible with older browsers,
so this means no CSS or any newfangled html.  When you do a fancy layout in
InDesign and then export it to html it uses CSS to try and get the placement
the same.  The last time I tried (v1.5) it didn't do a very good job either.

With InDesign 2.0 there is XML support.  The way this works is you tag the
document in InDesign, then export it to XML.  In order turn that XML into
HTML you have to either have a special web server that handles XML, which in
my case is unworkable, or you use another program to do conversion (for
example, Saxon was suggested to me). Additionally you need to write an XSLT
style sheet.

The advantage of the XML method is that it should give total control over
the HTML that's produced.  The disadvantages are needing this additional
program to do the conversion, and writing and maintaining the XSLT files.
The graphics designer I'm investigating this for is not interested in
learning XML and XSLT.

The other alternative that occured to me is to use some sort of page
templates with InDesign; a fancy one for the printed catalog, and a
barebones simple one for the web page and exporting that to html. I've read
the InDesign 2 manual but I can't tell how much control the page masters
give you.  For example, I'd like to use 2 columns for the fancy layout and 1
column for the web page, and different headers and footers; for example, no
page numbers on the web page version.  Would it be possible to do this with
InDesign using the master pages?

Another alternative that came to mind is exporting the InDesign file to XML,
then importing that back in but to a different layout.

And I'm not sure if InDesign's scripting provides anything that would help
accomplish this.

If anyone has any thoughts, feedback, etc. I'd love to hear it. Thanks.