CONTENTS
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1. XML -- WHERE'S IT COMING FROM?
2. SMART STYLES
3. BETTER WAYS OUT OF PUBLISHER
4. SEARCH ENGINE FOR FORMAT
5. STRANGE TAGGING OMISSION
6. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
7. XTENSIONS/PLUGINS/SCRIPTS
8. UTILITIES/UPDATES
9. HINTS
10. SOURCES OF INFORMATION
11. LAST WORD
1. XML -- WHERE'S IT COMING FROM?
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XML is the buzz word (or rather acronym) in newspaper publishing at the moment, with stories in publishing media around the world with titles like "Why XML text is vital for publishing", but XML (eXtensible Markup Language), seems to me to be getting very confused in its application.
We've seen two applications in the past week which take a newspaper page which has been created for print, and offer ways to create a version in XML format suitable for the web. This seems to be missing the point of XML or its parent SGML (Standard Generalised Markup Language), or indeed of any tagging system for publication.
These applications assume the newsprint version comes first. But does it, or should it? The publisher, in adopting a plan for the future, would presumably want that to be just one option. No one knows yet if the Web will cause a decline in print publishing, but if it does, traditional print publishers need to be ready to swap their current preferences, so the Web version comes first. We are not saying that will happen -- but few doubt that the Web will become increasingly important in a two-handed system. At present, print has the advantage of being the side which is making money.
XML -- or any tagging language -- therefore needs to return to its roots, as a "markup language", one that is applied at the stage of creation of text (and maybe pictures too). From that markup language the layout program will interpret the layout needs for the medium which is used.
We mentioned a month ago that there was not yet a word processor which created XML as its primary output. Perhaps that is because it may be too simple -- a text editor with the ability to add tags. That already exists in many ways but has not yet been promoted as creating specific XML tags.
It is also possible in many text editor programs to translate tags of one kind to tags of another. So, text produced with tags for PageMaker or QuarkXPress
could almost instantly be translated to quite complex HTML tags. That may be a good route for publishers to take, though a dedicated "tag converter" would be better. Either way, you'll then be ready for XML or the next great in-phrase in automating layout.
Step one, to be undertaken now, is to ensure that all page production is done using style tags for all except the most innocuous marking of bold or italic for a few words within paragraphs. If a layout demands a variation, then that variation should immediately be made into a "style".
2. SMART STYLES
===============
WoodWing Software has started shipping SmartStyles for InDesign which applies sequences of styles to text. There is also a limited period free trial version: <http://www.WoodWing.com>
We forecast that SmartStyles will become an essential extra for InD for use in newspapers and magazines. The control over text styling in sequences has been one of the most requested functions in scripts we have written for PageMaker, and here, for InDesign, it comes in an industrial strength, ready-made package for US$99. (We've shortened our scripting waiting list dramatically telling a number of clients: "Get SmartStyles").
We're also attracted to the SmartLayout package from WoodWing, but the US$500 price tag puts it outside the petty cash purchase range; the public beta version was released just a few days ago -- unfortunately without
sufficient documentation for easy trials.
SmartStyles features include stroke properties (color, width, type etc.), fill properties, colors including tints and gradients, corner effects, inset, number of columns etc. Paragraph style sequences allows specific styles for the first number of paragraphs, the last number of paragraphs and repeating styles for the paragraphs in between.
SmartStyles are stored in Style Libraries allowing drag and drop to apply them to a frame on the page. They are defined by creating an example page item and dropping it into a Style Library.
Paragraph styles and swatches used by Smart Styles are copied automatically to the document whenever they are not already available within the document.
Smart Styles for Adobe InDesign v1.5 is available for MacOS 9 and Windows (NT v4, 98, 2000).
3. BETTER WAYS OUT OF PUBLISHER
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Microsoft Publisher 2000 is a much friendlier program in its connections to other programs as we discovered when we installed it as part of an Office 2000 upgrade. Publisher can now export its text in a wide variety of formats, including the often underestimated RTF. This makes it much easier to bring formatted text into other page layout programs. Publisher 2000 also supports linked graphics rather than having all graphics embedded, and CMYK TIFFs can only be included in Publisher as linked graphics.
Considering that many small business advertisers are likely to be attracted to Publisher, it is nice to know that, provided you have a copy of the relatively cheap program you can now "convert" the resulting ads for your use. Of course, whether that is worth doing will depend on many other factors. You may also need to recognize a new file extension: .puz for publisher packaged files. In theory these should open in Publisher with everything they need to work properly.
4. SEARCH ENGINE FOR FORMAT
===========================
We have now installed a search engine on the Worsley Press web site, which is specially useful for info which is in back issues of Format.
Because it works on keywords being indexed in advance so that searches are quick, it may not include the latest issue of Format. However, the search engine does allow the use of AND, OR and NOT, as well as wildcards to search for the beginnings of words.
The search page is at <http://www.worsleypress.com/search.html>
5. STRANGE TAGGING OMISSION
=============================
An enquiry on the InDesign List recently produced the unexpected admission that InDesign's tagging language does not include the ability to import in-line graphics. It is possible that this could be done with a script going through the tagged text file after being placed but it seems an unusual omission as both the PageMaker and QuarkXPress tagging languages allow for in-line graphics, which is an essential part of some systems for using those programs in placing classified ads. And where would modern classified ads be without inline graphics (and the extra revenue they bring).
6. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
========================
David Moore quoted our comment from Format 40: Could the answer be a text processor that outputs to XML, with page layout and web production programs using an XML file as their main input?"
He replied: "YES, if anyone will ever listen! Maybe you could quantify the response for this? Keep up the good work Gordon."
7. XTENSIONS/PLUGINS/SCRIPTS
============================
Some updates of the scripts included on the InDesign CD are now available on the Adobe web site.
For Mac users, these now include scripts with user interfaces (built in FaceSpan) in place of the original scripts which have to be run from the Script Editor. In some cases this means that to change a parameter (such as effects in the PathEffects, RandomFill, Neon and AddGuides scripts), there is now a dialog box with controls -- this brings the Mac scripts up to par with the Windows versions. It also means that the Mac scripts are now self-contained applications--you don't have to launch the Script Editor to run them. The Mac archives contain both the script (which you run using the Script Editor) and the FaceSpan application. If you have FaceSpan, you can open the applications and see how they're put together, or use them as the basis for your own scripts.
The Mac versions also incorporate a few minor bug fixes and updated error checking routines. The Windows versions have a couple of minor changes to a couple of the projects files so that they're more likely to find the relevant forms (.frm) files.
There's also an article on using the example scripts as the basis for your own scripts. Script author Ole Kvern comments: "Want to create your own custom find/change routine? The CreateIndex script is a good place to start. Want to create a script that checks all of the graphics in the publication for some specific property (i.e., scaling, keyline, color, color profile)? Start with the SelectObjects script."
He adds: "There's also another page--to come--on converting QuarkXPress scripts to InDesign (including converting QuarkXPress scripts to Windows InDesign scripts--the Windows version of QuarkXPress does not support scripting)."
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A plug-in for Acrobat Distiller that reads the crop marks from the PS-file and then displays the bleed in the PDF is available free from <http://www.prinergy.com>. This works with PS-files from PM, ID and Quark. There is also a plugin that displays the Bleed and Trim box in Acrobat, this is the one I used to look after the bleed, I could have changed the mediabox and probably found the bleed. This plugin is doing the same as one of InProduction's parts. Both platforms, around 390kb.
8. UTILITIES/UPDATES
====================
Some problems have been reported in hyphenation of accented words within InDesign. In particular words containing umlauts would not hyphenate in the German version of the program. The problem was discovered in the Dutch version (after German had shipped) and an updated plug-in for the Mac Proximity dictionaries is now available at
<http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/main.html>
This update also fixes a hyphenation problem specific to text that uses the Dutch language dictionaries for spelling or hyphenation, in which words could become misspelled when hyphenated at certain accented characters.
The corrected plug-in is already included in the following language versions of InDesign 1.5: Dutch, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish, and Brazilian Portuguese.
9. HINTS
========
There have been a number of queries on newsgroups and forums on the lines of "how do I import/view Word 2000 documents?" The answer is that the file format has stayed the same since Word 95/97 (Windows) and Word 98 (Mac). So the filters for programs such as PageMaker and QXP that work for Word95 and later should import Word2000. This also means that the latest free Word viewer (useful for anyone who doesn't have Word itself), available on many download sites, is still wd97vwr32.exe
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We saw a suggestion that for some of the really complex search and replace possibilities, in almost any page layout program, the answer can be to export text as tagged text and work on that in a text editor. This makes it easier, for example, to see the differences between ordinary spaces, non-breaking spaces and fixed spaces.
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Lacking a text import filter for InDesign? If one exists for PageMaker you could try dropping the filter into InDesign's filter folder. We're told it works for the MacWrite Pro filter on a Mac.
A member of the InDesign team commented: "Rosetta Stone" was the code name for the body of code in PageMaker that supported import/export. InDesign has it's own import/export code, but for some older file formats we borrowed the filters from PageMaker and put the code to support these filters in the "Rosetta Stone" plug-in. Only a subset of the PageMaker text filters were included with InDesign. Only those included with InDesign were certified by our QA department. The others may or may not work properly."
11. LAST WORD
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A telling signature from a Format subscriber signing off with a message to thank us for the newsletter: "It's been a great read - interesting and useful." He added that he was no longer using or training in a page layout program.
The signature lines: "Recently I nearly lost all my email, accounts info and other crucial information in a disk failure. Have YOU backed up lately?"
Well? Have you? Last time we lost a hard disk we discovered everything was backed up except email.