Publisher and ICML files

[PaoloT]

Hi,

Pandoc is a powerful tool for interchanging files in markdown-based formats. Among the supported formats is ICML, but not IDML.

This might have some sense, since this is the Adobe InCopy format, and may be very useful for collaborators to publications centered in an InDesign project.

The ICML schema should be nearly identical to IDML. I would be very happy if Publisher could read it. In particular, because it is easy to export a Scrivener project to ICML though Pandoc.

Paolo

 

[Alexander Seifert]

I would really like to see this too! My current workflow is word -> pandoc -> icml -> InDesign. If Affinity Publisher allowed importing icml files I could finally ditch the Creative Suite.

[zixdesign]

Or if you would like to develop a tagged format of your own. If so, pandoc could surely be updated to support it. There is an internal markup language in Publisher like ICML, yes? Just that it hasn't been released yet?

[PaoloT]

5 hours ago, zixdesign said:

develop a tagged format of your own

A new tagged format would be only compatible with Publisher. Adopting an existing format would make Publisher compatible, at least at a certain extent, to existing editors, conversion filters, translation aids.

I have to add that the Pandoc ICML filter is not really usable. It just convert some basic elements (paragraph and character styles, table header and body cells, linked images paths). In addition, it pretends to change the name of the paragraph styles, according to a particular syntax. This means that if you have a set of paragraph styles in the original tagged text, these names will be forced to that particular syntax, and lose any compatibility with the document into which you are importing the ICML file.

Editing the existing filter, or making a new one, is a matter for good coders. I'm able to edit plists, but will not know where to start with this type of thing.

At this point in time, I wonder if the best file interchange format isn't something like HTML5. Very advanced in describing layout, even if conceived for web pages more than for printed pages. But the former is now more and more important than the latter for written documents. And giving a "printed" meaning to a web element is alway possible (for example, in describing the size of an image as a percentage of the page width).

Paolo