By: Erik Vlietinck
Tue, January 23, 2007 - 12:55:00

http://www.easypress.com
Score:

Ever had to convert an InDesign or QuarkXPress document into XML? Despite what Adobe claims, creating an XML document from an InDesign or even InCopy file is a daunting task. I once asked one of their engineers if the XML capabilities could make Golive obsolete, as XML surely would enable users to create true cross-media documents. The answer was that I would have a hard time creating XML and XHTML by using InCopy’s or InDesign’s ‘raw’ XML features. And QuarkXPress 7 or earlier is not about XML at all.

Easypress Technologies makes XML going in and coming out from QuarkXPress a lot more efficient and user-friendly than I could have imagined. Quark sent me an Atomik XML Publisher license and let me have a go at it. I must say Atomik XML Publisher makes importing and exporting XML a much nicer process than I could have imagined. To be honest, exporting is still much easier than importing, but both processes benefit a lot of Atomik XML Publisher’s no-brainer approach.

When To Convert?

Why and when should you convert a document created in QuarkXPress or InDesign, into XML? When you’re using a Content Management System that can read XML — and most can. XML makes it possible to create a document once and use it many times. That is called re-purposing and it saves a lot of time. It’s also what computers were really meant to do. The only difficulty is that XML might as well be Chinese to many people. Writing a DTD is not for the faint of heart, and writing well-formed XML is also something that takes a lot of knowledge, time and energy.

A system that automates most of the XML code creation therefore is a godsend, and Atomik XML Publisher is exactly that: it converts a document using the styles — both on paragraph and character level — in the document to XML. Atomik XML Publisher is an XTension for QuarkXPress 7 and it lives in QuarkXPress’ menu bar. It adds two menu options: Import and Xport. 

Atomik XML Publisher lets you export XML from a regular QuarkXPress file with a minimum of preparation. All you need to do, is set up the software so that it knows where to look for in the document in order to generate the appropriate XML tags. It will happily create a XML document for your own use, without a DTD. HOwever, if you want your XML document to be not just well-formed, but also valid, then a DTD is obligatory. Well, creating a DTD is only one checkbox away.

What I found especially encouraging about Atomik XML Publisher is that Easypress doesn’t seem to think you’re a XML expert. The software comes with a dozen or so tutorials that start at the real beginner’s level, and quickly introduce you to the more powerful — and therefore complex — features of the XTension and its power to output valid XML and the associated DTDs.

Valid XML

Atomik XML Publisher not only creates XML from straight text and image documents, but also from tables on the page. Tables belong to the realm of the more powerful export features, and therefore setting up the software so it will correctly convert a table into XML code, requires some more preparation than when you’re dealing with text only, but only by a margin.

QuarkXPress documents often have various text boxes on a page, each with its own — not necessarily connected — content. A problem exists with such boxes: which order will Atomik have to use for “reading” those boxes? The answer is partly in the human reading habit — left to right and top to bottom for Western text — partly with the preferences that you can set up in the XTension. You can actually set the box order by clicking the icons in the Boxes tab and making the necessary adjustments for tolerance, overlap, overmatter, etc. Especially with overmatter, Atomik XML Publisher seems to be very powerful. 

In some cases, you will have text over set in a text box, because you don’t want the text to be printed. But on a web page, you do want to show that text. With Atomik XML Publisher, it’s a matter of selecting the radio button in the right tab. When exporting valid XML, the DTD that is formed for you by Atomik XML Publisher can be either included with the document or output to an external file.

Importing XML is a bit harder to do, mainly because you will usually haven’t got a clue as to whether the file is valid, well-formed, or just garbage. If it’s garbage, Atomik XML Publisher will tell you in an instant. The interface has an Errors tab, allowing you to instantly see where the document and DTD have errors.