Boos Design Group

Lynda.com Course on InDesign CS5: Dynamic Publishing Workflows in XML

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July 30, 2010 3 comments

I completed my first complete course on lynda.com today. The course is named InDesign CS5: Dynamic Publishing Workflows in XML. The course taught me how to create dynamic workflows by importing XML data into InDesign layouts. It explained how to create XML documents, import and export them in InDesign CS5 and how to apply styles and tags to an InDesign document.

I am going to use what I learned on a catalog for Ralston Instruments that I am working on with Vince Frantz from Frantz ID. It is a Sprokets project. The catalog will have several products, and tables with SKUs and data. As many of you know, information in a catalog can change as soon as it’s printed. We are going to import data into the catalog so our client can easily update the XML data to make any changes for reprints of the catalog. This will be a huge time-saver for our client.

I also plan to experiment with this process on other projects. I work on several publications where importing XML data into the InDesign document would save production time, leaving more time for design and saving money for my clients.

Watching the video tutorials on this subject at lynda.com was an easy way to learn how to create dynamic publishing workflows by using XML data in InDesign documents. It also covered using DTD files, which would validate the XML structure for the documents, and how to use XSLT files to even further automate the process. The course covered how to set-up completed InDesign documents for books to export XML data that could be used on the web, in an eBook or in another InDesign document. Lynda.com also gives a Certificate of Completion after finishing a course to show your boss, co-workers and clients.

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