[XSL-LIST Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date]

Re: XSL FOs -> PDF using InDesign

---

---

At 06:08 22/10/1999 , Eric Muller wrote:

Sebastian Rahtz wrote:

> I was wondering
> about writing something to transform FOs into the tagged text format
> that InDesign supports for import. Is anyone familiar with that markup
> set? Is it capable enough?

The documentation for it is on the InDesign CD. I suppose it's no secret,
by I got my copy (of this documentation) internally, so I am no sure it is
a version for public consumption.

In any case, no, I don't think it is powerful enough. It is pretty much
limited to character and paragraph formatting properties. I believe it is
not possible to specify which frames occur on which pages via a tagged
file. You can get a good feeling for what it is by exporting a document to
a tagged file and looking at it.

On the other hand, the plug-in mechanism seems much better. In fact, the
SDK tutorial has an example of an import filter that creates a document
from scratch.

Framemaker would seem to be a good
choice for this sort of work.

It has two languages: MML (simpler),
and MIF (more powerful), allowing you to
choice the best import language for the job
at hand. My understanding is that MIF allows
you to specify frames, graphics, tables, etc.

But why would you want to:

XML -> XSL -> XSL:FO -> MIF -> Frame -> PDF

When you could just go:

XML -> MIF -> Frame -> PDF

The former process would seem to introduce two
limiting factors: the expressiveness of both XSL:FO
and MIF. You could only really get the features
that were implemented in both ...

Stil, I guess it could be done,

J

-------------------------
James Robertson
Step Two Designs Pty Ltd
SGML, XML & HTML Consultancy
http://www.steptwo.com.au/
jamesr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"Beyond the Idea"
 ACN 081 019 623

XSL-List info and archive: http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list

---