Article:		Adobe's InDesign and XML
Subject:		Table Data Import
Date:		2004-08-11 01:33:56
From:		Bernd Hofner
I was playing a bit with the InDesign XML import capabilities. It seems to me, that the support for table like data is pretty limited. At least I didn't find an easy way to convert something like: <Articles> <Article> <Name>Superarticle</Name> <Price>18,95</Price> </Article> <Article> <Name>evenbetterarticle</Name> <Price>20,95</Price> </Article> </Articles> into an InDesign table. The only way to get a table into InDesign seems structuring my XML data in the proprietary InDesign table export format (I found this clue somewhere in a newsgoup, unfortunatly not in the InDesign documentation). This isn't very elegant, because I weaken the distinction between content (XML) and layout (InDesign) by being forced to deliver content that already contains partial layout data. The content becomes cluttered with the layout data and must be targeted especially for InDesign. Is there a nicer solution? Maybe it is possible to trigger a InDesign script when importing a new XML file that converts the XML table-like data to a InDesgn table layout? Cheers, Bernd

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• Table Data Import
  2005-01-03 04:31:01 JoachimKarl [Reply]
  
  Hello Bernd,

  
  yes, I agree, InDesign's XML Table Features are weak.

  
  If you really need a solution for this, you can use scripting (visual Basic or applescript).
  you can define your own xml-format, apply an xsl-t transformation and build a new or change an existing indesign table while walking throut the resulting DOM-Object.

  
  I've done this for some customers on a windows platform using visual basic. It's not an easy solution, but if you need the actuality of the indesign documents (for example with new data from a database system) it migth be worth the efforts.

  
  Jo