[TYPO3-english] Indesign?

[Wiel, J.A.M. van de]

Hi list,
Seeing how my proof-of-concept InDesign-importer generates quite a bit of interest here, I'll comment some more on it. What I had been developing roughly a year ago, was a way to import InDesign XML exports into TYPO3. Hopefully it's still on my computer, as the project was more or less abandoned before it was finished but if it is I'll post a link to a T3X file here tomorrow. It's just a proof of concept, so not mature enough by a long shot to be included in TER.

What I did was pick up an InDesign export XML plus all accompanying images, which InDesign CS2 is capable of generating automatically in formats suitable for web work. The user had to archive this folder structure into a zip file for upload into the BE. My extension would then uncompress and analyze the XML, piece together articles from the publication and convert this structure to a hierarchy. From that point on my code would borrow gratefully from the import/export sysext by creating an intermediary T3D file of a page structure to mirror the InDesign document. Using this T3D file the TYPO3 editor would be able to preview the structure before generating potentially massive numbers of pages by simply using the import/export functionality already provides. Also, by generating first a valid T3D file I would hit any strangeness in the data structure before actually touching the TYPO3 database. After evaluating the T3D file the editor would simply point out a page and the new structure would be created inside it. Some manual cleaning up of content pages is still required, but a lot of tedious work was automated.

The biggest problem with the extension at this point is that literally everything is hard-coded to match my testing InDesign file. The extension would require a lot of work, probably a complete rewrite, to be useful in a more generic setting. Also, on the InDesign part of the equation, you'll need to mark up your document in a semantically correct way so that the exported XML will make sense. This is relatively easy to do if you're creating a new layout template, but retrofitting old documents is quite a hassle.

The project was abandoned here internally due to shifting priorities but since there appears to be a lot of interest, I'll pick it up again in my free time as a case study for the programming courses I'm following anyway.

Bas

________________________________________
From: typo3-english-bounces at lists.netfielders.de [typo3-english-bounces at lists.netfielders.de] On Behalf Of Christian Platt [christian.platt at pharmaline.de]
Sent: Tuesday, March 24, 2009 8:16 PM
To: TYPO3 English
Subject: Re: [TYPO3-english] Indesign?

Also beeing interested in an Indesign to somewhat importer,

so please let the list know...
Christian

Am 24.03.2009 um 19:12 schrieb Oliver Schröder:

> Hi,
>
> this was the fastest response in this newsgroup to a question by
> me :-)
>
> Thanx,
> Oliver
>
>> Yes,
>> I should have something of a half-baked extension for this
>> somewhere. Will get back to you tomorrow, when I'm at work.
>>
>> Bas
> _______________________________________________
> TYPO3-english mailing list
> TYPO3-english at lists.netfielders.de
> http://lists.netfielders.de/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/typo3-english

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