At a recent Central Texas DITA User Group meeting, Eliot Kimber told me about a project that he’s working on that can take DITA content and transform it to InDesign layouts. I’m completely fascinated, if feeling a little over my head. But for me, blogging is about learning more, and sharing what you learn in the process.
Basically, he’s getting XML that is DITA into and out of Adobe InDesign CS3. InDesign CS3 has the distinction of being the Adobe product (not FrameMaker, boo hoo) from which you can get Digital Editions/ePub formats.
While Eliot hasn’t created When you pair InDesign with Typefi Autofit, a free plug-in for InDesign, you can get even more complex layouts automated. Automatically. I’m blown away by the possibilities for the OLPC XO manual.
This post includes Eliot’s original background information for XML authoring for book layout, and it’s quite long. But it helps you understand the background of where he’s coming from.
The company he works for, Really [ ] Strategies, has a blog where he’s talking about the project and some success with conversions so far, using the Project Gutenberg library. This example Gutenberg layout will be neat to try out on my XO computer as an ebook reader. I want to start by re-reading 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
So, how do the textbooks talk?
The reason I say he can make textbooks talk using this type of methodology is because textbooks are required to be in some sort of accessible format to the blind or visually impaired by many states, including Texas. So, XML and ePub formats go a long way towards the goal of meeting accessibility standards. Getting textbooks into DITA XML and then into InDesign – brilliant, and accessible.
How can I help?
Eliot’s looking for participants for his DITA2InDesign project in SourceForge. If you want to help out or check what’s available so far, see the project page on Sourceforge.
What an awesome project that is. Please, look for ways you can help if you have XML, XSLT, DITA, or InDesign abilities. (Seth, Steve, any interest? 🙂 )