Re: [docbook-apps] DocBook and InDesign

[Giuseppe Bonelli <peppo.bonelli@gmail.com>]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Giuseppe Bonelli <peppo.bonelli@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Jun 15, 2010 at 11:41 AM
Subject: Re: [docbook-apps] DocBook and InDesign
To: Camille Bégnis <camille@neodoc.biz>


Hi Camille,
you are not alone!

In my experience the lack of the interactivity in the PDF production
phase is, at least in the non technical book publishing market where
good typography is very important, the single most important problem
that hamper the adoption of docbook based workflows.

Going from DB to inDesign is certainly possible, as Adobe has opened
up completely its InDesign file format by publishing the IDML specs,
an XML format where every aspect of the InDesign object model is
exposed.

As a starting point you can use an XSLT to transform a DB file in a
InCopy file to be placed directly in an InDesign template containing
the definition of all the relevant styles.

In line of principle is also possible to write a complete two-way
roundtripping ID-DB solution, following a path  along the lines of the
standard DB roundtripping XSLT for Word/OpenOffice/Page, but I think
this is not a trivial task.

A couple of months ago I posted on this list a request for
comments/interest on this topic, but I received very few replies, so I
assume the interest is not huge among the DB community.

I will definitely have to do some work on this as I have some clients
who are not confortable with the typographycal quality you can
actually get with FO, even using the AntennaHouse formatter, and
therefore need a path going from DB to InDesign.

If you will do some work on this topic, please keep me informed about
your progress (I will do the same).

regards,

__peppo

On Tue, Jun 15, 2010 at 9:22 AM, Camille Bégnis <camille@neodoc.biz> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I have a client that wishes to be able to fine tune the PDF rendering
> with InDesign, of content written in DocBook.
> Have someone already done that? Is it realistic? Costly?
>
> Any feedback appreciated.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Camille;
>
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