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In this book, we will be referring to InDesign CS5, and previous versions of the
program back to CS3, generically as "InDesign CS". When there are important
differences in the version's XML features, we will indicate for which version the
screen shot or other information applies. Many features are not different from one
version to another. Generally the screen shots will be taken from InDesign
CS5.We'll start with the assumption that you already know quite a bit about
InDesign typographic styles and layout features because you want to use InDesign
to do something with XML. In particular, you will need to understand the role that
paragraph and character styles play in making InDesign documents that are
consistently the same in their typographical presentation throughout a given
document, or a set of documents using the same InDesign template. (If you are
new to these concepts, please refer to Adobe's InDesign CS built-in Help>Styles
or see O'Reilly's Adobe InDesign CS5 One-on-One.)
The power that XML brings to the InDesign world is summed up in the word
"interoperability," which means that the same content in XML format can be used
in multiple applications or processes, and not solely inside InDesign. XML is
typically used for creating HTML for web sites, but it can also be used to create
rich text, PDF, or plain text files. XML does not inherently have "presentation
styles"—how the content of an XML file looks depends upon the way that it is
formatted and used by applications. The main purpose of XML is to provide a
reliable structure of content so that it can be processed consistently once the
application has rules for presenting the structure visually. (For more information
on XML, see O'Reilly's XML in a Nutshell, Third Edition.) |
