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[IDML Implemented] How can I open Indesign (indd and idml) Files in Publisher?


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9 minutes ago, Tom Schülke said:

No not at all..   This is only true for smal companys and people who work alone..     my company , 500 architects are dependent on interdiscoplinary workflows, that for example include green Planing...     they just send their indesign document to the greenplaner who puts in what is missing from his side, and the file comes back...

without the possibility of exchanging with external people, affinity PHoto will cost us more workingpower maybe as we spare from switching away from adobe.

so im and export of indesign formats ore idlm formats is a killerfeature for all people who have to work with others together.. 

No, what Tom says is correct.  The industry standard is Adobe Indesign, for any other software to impact this market it must have file-compatibility...

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1 hour ago, MikeW said:

IDML export from a non-ID source is not and never will be a good work-flow. IDML export back and forth between different versions of ID is not typically a good work-flow either.

If you need to work with contractors outside of a controlled environment—i.e., outside your own company that makes a switch from ID to anything else—either y'all must remain ID users or they too need to switch to whatever your company uses for your jobs.

I am a contractor. Which is why I have 4 different layout applications installed (aside from APub). I absolutely need to use what my clients are using if there is any hope of not causing downstream problems.

Mike

+1

There will never be a perfect conversion tool for Indesign files to something else and vice versa. Same goes for Quark. There is software that does convert Quark to Indesign but that is not perfect either. A perfect conversion from Indesign to Publisher for your work flow is never going to happen and obviously Publisher is not the app for you as you are dependent on Indesign. You are only opening up yourself to possibly expensive problems and mistakes by looking for a solution like that. 

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9 minutes ago, wonderings said:

+1

There will never be a perfect conversion tool for Indesign files to something else and vice versa. Same goes for Quark. There is software that does convert Quark to Indesign but that is not perfect either. A perfect conversion from Indesign to Publisher for your work flow is never going to happen and obviously Publisher is not the app for you as you are dependent on Indesign. You are only opening up yourself to possibly expensive problems and mistakes by looking for a solution like that. 

The same company's conversion from ID to Q is better than the reverse. Why I have no idea. QXP, beginning with the last update to the Q2017 version (which was really a wide beta test, aside from the bug fixes it brought) can now open IDML files. It improved through the remainder of the 2017 version and with the 2018 version and it is likely something Quark will continue to work on over the course of a couple/few whole versions. Even so, I doubt it will ever be "perfect."

The same will apply to Serif. People should not expect the first few/several whole versions of APub to perfectly support IDML. Even if Serif do an export to IDML, it too may not (ever) be perfect. So using APub in an ID to APub to ID (or whatever combination) work-flow is not a realistic expectation.

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How viable Publisher may be is certainly up to debate. And for some it may never be suitable. For many others, who are tired, or cannot afford it in the first place, of paying for Adobe subscriptions, Publisher will be an attractive alternative. It's not a zero sum game. InDesign may continue to prosper while Publisher grabs it's own share of the market. However, the price differential is dramatic. Those who cannot afford InDesign CC will scoop it up. Unfortunately, InDesign CS6 is not a 64 bit app (unlike Photoshop CS6) so it will eventually become unusable—on the Mac, at least, when macOS 10.15 comes out late next year. Of course there's no law saying you have to upgrade your OS. Apple will continue to support High Sierra for another year past that and Mojave for two more years. So if you are concerned about security, you can still use InDesign CS6 through 2021. If, as is the case with many, you don't pay that much attention to security in your (Mac) OS, the horizon is effectively unlimited.

Which means you can retain InDesign CS6, if you are using it, while migrating to Publisher to avoid both the obsolescence of CS6 and the cost of InDesign CC.

As far as I know, there is no published deadline for 32 bit apps on Windows, so CS6 will remain usable indefinitely (correct me if I'm wrong).

Still, CS6 is no longer growing, while InDesign CC and Publisher are. If your workflow is settled, this may not matter. But if you are a dynamic designer, you will need to keep up with the Jones's, so to speak, so Quark Xpress, Indesign CC or Publisher will be your primary choices going forward.

Unless Adobe lowers the price of InDesign to an attractive level, as it has done with Photoshop and Lightroom, I will be migrating to Publisher. By the way, the latest beta, while it contains may fixes and improvements, does not yet include InDesign compatibility, let alone Quark. Hopefully this will come before the final release of Publisher, or that event will be overshadowed by its absence.

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8 hours ago, MikeW said:

IDML export from a non-ID source is not and never will be a good work-flow. IDML export back and forth between different versions of ID is not typically a good work-flow either.

If you need to work with contractors outside of a controlled environment—i.e., outside your own company that makes a switch from ID to anything else—either y'all must remain ID users or they too need to switch to whatever your company uses for your jobs.

I am a contractor. Which is why I have 4 different layout applications installed (aside from APub). I absolutely need to use what my clients are using if there is any hope of not causing downstream problems.

Mike

The solution for any clients is to send a PDF to the contractor. Of course that is an extra step that many choose not to use. But printing a PDF on a laser printer in house is a good way to proof your color and other critical settings. If it works on the in-house (color) laser, chances are excellent it will print OK at the service bureau.

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19 hours ago, Peter Jackson said:

No, what Tom says is correct.  The industry standard is Adobe Indesign, for any other software to impact this market it must have file-compatibility...

Are there any Acts of Standardisation, some other Laws or similar, where it is said that everyone must use Adobe products otherwise they will be prosecuted? I don't think so. Everyone can use the software he is used to and deliver the customer PDF, not source.

All the latest releases of Designer, Photo and Publisher (retail and beta) on MacOS and Windows.
15” Dell Inspiron 7559 i7 Windows 10 x64 Pro Intel Core i7-6700HQ (3.50 GHz, 6M) 16 GB Dual Channel DDR3L 1600 MHz (8GBx2) NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M 4 GB GDDR5 500 GB SSD + 1 TB HDD UHD (3840 x 2160) Truelife LED - Backlit Touch Display
32” LG 32UN650-W display 3840 x 2160 UHD, IPS, HDR10 Color Gamut: DCI-P3 95%, Color Calibrated 2 x HDMI, 1 x DisplayPort
13.3” MacBook Pro (2017) Ventura 13.6 Intel Core i7 (3.50 GHz Dual Core) 16 GB 2133 MHz LPDDR3 Intel Iris Plus Graphics 650 1536 MB 500 GB SSD Retina Display (3360 x 2100)

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25 minutes ago, Anjo said:

How many would buy/use AFIINITY PHOTO without the great PSD import export capability?

PSD support is available in many other graphic apps, so it is a natural exchange format. IDML support is not available anywhere, (unless you buy an expensive add on). Layout apps are de facto much more locked in their own formats and while of course it is great if Affinity can break into those formats it is not so easily done technically.

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4 hours ago, Fixx said:

PSD support is available in many other graphic apps, so it is a natural exchange format. IDML support is not available anywhere, (unless you buy an expensive add on). Layout apps are de facto much more locked in their own formats and while of course it is great if Affinity can break into those formats it is not so easily done technically.

Both QuarkXPress and Viva Designer import IDML. Viva Designer also exports IDML. VD does both directions fairly well too.

No add-on required. 

Mike 

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10 hours ago, MikeW said:

Both QuarkXPress and Viva Designer import IDML. Viva Designer also exports IDML. VD does both directions fairly well too.

No add-on required. 

Mike 

Wow, Linux is finally heard from. That is, as far as I can see, Viva Designer is a Linux app. As for IDML, that's hardly a common text layout format. There are plenty of markup text editors that can no doubt read IDML. On the Mac the best known is BBEdit, but markup language editors seem to be proliferating these days. I don't know why you would need Publisher to handle it. Perhaps you can enlighten me on the desirability of such a feature.

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10 minutes ago, Whitedog said:

Wow, Linux is finally heard from. That is, as far as I can see, Viva Designer is a Linux app. As for IDML, that's hardly a common text layout format. There are plenty of markup text editors that can no doubt read IDML. On the Mac the best known is BBEdit, but markup language editors seem to be proliferating these days. I don't know why you would need Publisher to handle it. Perhaps you can enlighten me on the desirability of such a feature.

Viva Designer is supported on Linux, Mac and Windows. 

IDML is a format that can be used to backsave to earlier versions. It is also useful to get rid of cruft that can cause issues as these can be stripped out in saving to IDML as well. The format is also a useful exchange format for some translation applications.

As well, the point of these requests is it can be a format to port a document from ID to non-Adobe applications. 

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15 hours ago, Petar Petrenko said:

Are there any Acts of Standardisation, some other Laws or similar, where it is said that everyone must use Adobe products otherwise they will be prosecuted? I don't think so. Everyone can use the software he is used to and deliver the customer PDF, not source.

Right. That is why most service bureaus support multiple applications, Word, QuarkXpress, and InDesign at a minimum. InDesign may be the most commonly used layout design application among professional and semi-pro designers, eclipsing Quark, but it is far from an "industry standard." Industry standard is nothing more than a vanity plate. There are no standards organizations that pick winners and losers like that. Indeed, docx is far closer to an industry standard than indd. Of course, not too many designers work in Word, but plenty of regular users do.

I would expect Serif is working on Publisher compatibility with Quark and Word as well as InDesign. It can hardly be a competent publishing app without supporting import of the most common document formats. And, it goes without saying, that RTF will/is supported.

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42 minutes ago, MikeW said:

Viva Designer is supported on Linux, Mac and Windows. 

IDML is a format that can be used to backsave to earlier versions. It is also useful to get rid of cruft that can cause issues as these can be stripped out in saving to IDML as well. The format is also a useful exchange format for some translation applications.

As well, the point of these requests is it can be a format to port a document from ID to non-Adobe applications. 

Yes, but what apps support IDML? I suggested BBEdit, as I primarily use a Mac. As well, what do you consider "cruft"? Stylesheets? Layout specifications like spreads and bleeds and master pages? Well, if Serif wants to support IDML I suppose that's up to them. But the need hardly seems critical.

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At least the applications I listed. And of course ID does so natively. 

Yes, any text editor can work on the files inside of an IDML file. But pretty much you are limited to editing the text portions you would see on a page unless you know what it all means. If you do not then you've ruined the file.

It's usefulness as regards APub is not much different than Serif supporting rtf, docx, eps, pdf or whatever. 

The difference is the ID file, if it is going to be opened in another application is they have to be able to open it.

 

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Here it is what I got with Copy/Paste a single page from ID to Publisher:

  1. as you can see the text styles are imported into Publisher (highlighted style corresponds with selected text).. This is OK.
  2. as expected, footnotes are not imported because Publisher doesn't support this feature, yet.
  3. pictures are not imported too, because they are anchored (inline) into text. Publisher doesn't support this feature, either.
  4. as you can see, the font for the selected title is not OK. There is a question mark in front of it. I don't know what the problem is.
  5. and the font is not displayed in text style panel. It is not recognized as well. It is a problem, too. Anyway, if you set the correct font in text styles panel, everything will be OK.

So, when A-team will give us footnotes and inline pictures, Copy/Paste will be of extremly great help with native ID text and probably with Quark.

Copy-Paste.png

page from ID.png

All the latest releases of Designer, Photo and Publisher (retail and beta) on MacOS and Windows.
15” Dell Inspiron 7559 i7 Windows 10 x64 Pro Intel Core i7-6700HQ (3.50 GHz, 6M) 16 GB Dual Channel DDR3L 1600 MHz (8GBx2) NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M 4 GB GDDR5 500 GB SSD + 1 TB HDD UHD (3840 x 2160) Truelife LED - Backlit Touch Display
32” LG 32UN650-W display 3840 x 2160 UHD, IPS, HDR10 Color Gamut: DCI-P3 95%, Color Calibrated 2 x HDMI, 1 x DisplayPort
13.3” MacBook Pro (2017) Ventura 13.6 Intel Core i7 (3.50 GHz Dual Core) 16 GB 2133 MHz LPDDR3 Intel Iris Plus Graphics 650 1536 MB 500 GB SSD Retina Display (3360 x 2100)

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17 hours ago, MikeW said:

At least the applications I listed. And of course ID does so natively. 

Yes, any text editor can work on the files inside of an IDML file. But pretty much you are limited to editing the text portions you would see on a page unless you know what it all means. If you do not then you've ruined the file.

It's usefulness as regards APub is not much different than Serif supporting rtf, docx, eps, pdf or whatever. 

The difference is the ID file, if it is going to be opened in another application is they have to be able to open it.

 

When I first searched for VivaDesigner I was directed to the Linux version. I've done a more thorough search and found the Mac and Windows versions. Still, it's an app I've never heard of, though apparently it's been around for awhile—its now at version 9. It is apparently aimed at more industrial uses, for automating catalog production, for example.

As for IDML, I also had a mistaken impression—since I never used it in InDesign. It seemed unnecessary; packaging a project seemed good enough and the service bureaus I've used were satisfied with that. Then again, if your project is large, containing numerous images, IDML might be desirable because it compresses to a zip archive, no doubt saving considerable space. These days, though, saving space is less important than it used to be. Thumb drives are available with huge capacities, far eclipsing CDs, DVDs and even BluRay. And a USB 3 thumb drive writes and reads much faster than any optical media. Then again, if you use the cloud to transfer your project, IDML might be useful, as Internet bandwidth can sometimes be an issue. And file corruption over the web is also a concern; zipping a file can prevent that.

So I apologize for not remembering what IDML stands for. Opening an IDML file with a normal word processor would, of course, be unnecessary in most cases, so that was a red herring I followed when I landed on a Linux page for VivaDesigner.

That being said, I can understand why people looking for InDesign compatibility might look for IDML compatibility as well.

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4 minutes ago, Whitedog said:

That being said, I can understand why people looking for InDesign compatibility might look for IDML compatibility as well.

As an aside, I've only packaged an ID project for my own archival purposes. I've never sent native files for print purposes. 

Because application developers can't open native ID files (with every revision of ID, Adobe changes the file format so it would always be a moving target anyway), IDML provides a relatively stable path to provide the means of reading ID files.

Mike 

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IDML does not store images and other linked files. It only contains structure and links to linked pictures/PDF, etc., info about all the fonts used from the start… All parameters possible in ID.

 It's not use for archiving, but as already said, for opening files in older versions of ID (but you won't have the new features if they're used in the new version, like different corners for a frame, etc.).

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I'm sure that this is pretty common knowledge but, just in case : "You can copy objects from many other applications and paste them into QuarkXPress as native QuarkXPress items, including Adobe InDesign, Illustrator, CorelDRAW, Affinity Designer, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Apple Pages. And yes, you can successfully convert an entire InDesign page to QuarkXPress." This is quoted from "Quarkxpress 2017 for Dummies"

I haven't tested this exhaustively—at all—but I have imported & converted Id, Ai and ms wd docs to native QXP files. My conversions were perfect with all formatting intact and no odd, random characters, funny spaces or surplus boxes—but now the files were native QXP files. I prefer QXP to Id for my prof. work although, at the university, I teach/help my GD students the CC apps. As I've stated before, I export all my print work to PDF as that's what the printers want and, it's easier for me. As such, again, for me, it's the ability of Apub to successfully open QXP, Id, Ai, PDF, word, etc. files. As long as I can export from Af apps to PDF, I'm good.

lettergothic 

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10 hours ago, Wosven said:

IDML does not store images and other linked files. It only contains structure and links to linked pictures/PDF, etc., info about all the fonts used from the start… All parameters possible in ID.

 It's not use for archiving, but as already said, for opening files in older versions of ID (but you won't have the new features if they're used in the new version, like different corners for a frame, etc.).

Thank you for enlightening me. Can you tell me what advantage IDML has over a standard ID package, which includes linked images?

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10 hours ago, Fixx said:

Main purpose for IDML is to be able to open a project with older version of InDesign. Not all designers are using latest InDesign version (I am using CS5, occasionally CS6).

Does that mean that if I have InDesign CC files, if I save them as IDML, that I can open them in, InDesign CS6 or earlier? If so, that would enable one to stop a CC subscription and nevertheless be able to open CC files, if they are saved in IDML.

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41 minutes ago, Whitedog said:

Does that mean that if I have InDesign CC files, if I save them as IDML, that I can open them in, InDesign CS6 or earlier? If so, that would enable one to stop a CC subscription and nevertheless be able to open CC files, if they are saved in IDML.

At least in CS6, but CC has features that do not work in earlier versions.

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53 minutes ago, Whitedog said:

If so, that would enable one to stop a CC subscription and nevertheless be able to open CC files, if they are saved in IDML. 

Yes, you can open them in CS6 and earlier, but you'll miss some advanced features and use of some plugin can prevent you from opening the files in earlier version. (I can't remember the details, but I couldn't open some files because it was asking for a plugin or cancelled the opening).

A best practice is to archive with IDML option checked. 

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