[Framers] Importing InDesign IDML into two tools. Was RE: FM 10 on a new computer.

[Peter Gold]

Some Framers are considering alternate applications, so compatibility
information and usability comparisons are useful.

As to possibly-embedded characters affecting line endings and similar
behavior, the InDesign option to hide/reveal hidden characters can help.

On Fri, Aug 20, 2021, 8:54 PM Syed Zaeem Hosain <Syed.Hosain at aeris.net>
wrote:

> I just realized that I am wasting time for you all with an
> InDesign-related thread in a FrameMaker forum.
>
> Sorry about that! ☹
>
> So ... moving on ...
>
> Z
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Framers <framers-bounces+syed.hosain=aeris.net at lists.frameusers.com>
> On Behalf Of Syed Zaeem Hosain
> Sent: Friday, August 20, 2021 6:49 PM
> To: An email list for people using Adobe FrameMaker software. <
> framers at lists.frameusers.com>
> Subject: Re: [Framers] Importing InDesign IDML into two tools. Was RE: FM
> 10 on a new computer.
>
> Robert, my son checked and could not find an Export or Save As capability
> for RTF in InDesign. Do you, or anyone else, know if this is possible?
>
> Peter, the readback of the IDML back into InDesign was fine! My son noted
> that the display looked like the original INDD file.
>
> FWIW, I also tried opening the PDF (from InDesign) into Word and
> discovered some of the same errors (for example, carriage returns in wrong
> places in the text). The only thing I have not tried yet is to output Word
> or RTF format from Acrobat Pro ... hmmm.
>
> It is possible that our tech writer (no longer with us, unfortunately) who
> did the InDesign work for this document had extra carrier returns in there
> - which do not "show" in the PDF or within InDesign, but are present when
> the PDF (into Word) and IDML (into Affinity and Designer Pro) are imported!
>
> Since I do not have an InDesign license, I cannot verify this myself ...
> may download a trial to check things out myself, but I am not familiar with
> InDesign, so this may be slow ...
>
> Z
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Framers <framers-bounces+syed.hosain=aeris.net at lists.frameusers.com>
> On Behalf Of Peter Gold
> Sent: Thursday, August 19, 2021 7:57 PM
> To: An email list for people using Adobe FrameMaker software. <
> framers at lists.frameusers.com>
> Subject: Re: [Framers] Importing InDesign IDML into two tools. Was RE: FM
> 10 on a new computer.
>
> Hi, Robert!
>
> For whatever reasons, I never needed or wanted to go to Github, until
> now....!!! Egad!
>
> Now that I’ve seen this, I’m not going to wonder about it. I am sure I’m
> not going down this rabbit hole. It reminds me of the scene in the Tom
> Sawyer movie I saw as a kid, when the string ran out and the candle died,
> and I was sure if I were with Tom and Becky, I'd never get back outside the
> cave. ;)
>
> But, this peek answers some of my questions about the problems being
> discussed here.
>
> The real issues, IMO, is which FrameMaker document properties an author
> expects to preserve when converting to another application, and whether the
> goal is to return the transformed and modified document perfectly
> re-interpreted to FM from the foreign application. Basically, two different
> universes need to be preserved - text and objects. Each application
> describes text and object properties with different languages and
> structures. And, just as in human languages, some ideas don't translate
> directly. Over FM's lifetime, some later releases had problems supporting
> structures from earlier ones. If this stuff were easy, it wouldn't have
> taken so long for some seemingly-simple feature requests to have been
> honored.
>
> So, in this branch of the thread, I wonder if converting a document to a
> competing layout application preserves layout features, does FM or ID text
> that's copied and pasted into the converted layout survive well, or is it
> also garbled as described? Does RTF work better or worse? Remember that
> InDesign has one of the most sophisticated text composition engines. So,
> perhaps the competitors don't compute text properties as well, or they lack
> some comparable computed properties.
>
>
> On Thu, Aug 19, 2021 at 4:22 PM Robert Lauriston <robert at lauriston.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Did you try exporting from InDesign as RTF?
> >
> > Even if they're not using the same library, such as
> https://github.com/jorisros/IDMLlib , other applications will inevitably
> have trouble reading IDM if they can't do everything that InDesign can.
> >
> > On Thu, Aug 19, 2021 at 2:12 PM Syed Zaeem Hosain
> > <Syed.Hosain at aeris.net> wrote:
> > >
> > > A last update.
> > >
> > > Reading the IDML back into InDesign worked fine - looked like the
> original!
> > >
> > > So, both these other tools have some limitations importing IDML.
> > >
> > > Although Affinity Publisher was a small amount better (not enough to
> justify my getting yet another editing tool - I will get the trial lapse).
> > >
> > > So, they are clearly fine for *new* work, but importing IDML from
> InDesign would require repair to fix some errors - which errors, as
> mentioned earlier, surprisingly overlapped in the tools.
> _______________________________________________
>
> This message is from the Framers mailing list
>
> Send messages to framers at lists.frameusers.com Visit the list's homepage
> at  http://www.frameusers.com Archives located at
> http://www.mail-archive.com/framers%40lists.frameusers.com/
> Subscribe and unsubscribe at
> http://lists.frameusers.com/listinfo.cgi/framers-frameusers.com
> Send administrative questions to listadmin at frameusers.com
> _______________________________________________
>
> This message is from the Framers mailing list
>
> Send messages to framers at lists.frameusers.com
> Visit the list's homepage at  http://www.frameusers.com
> Archives located at
> http://www.mail-archive.com/framers%40lists.frameusers.com/
> Subscribe and unsubscribe at
> http://lists.frameusers.com/listinfo.cgi/framers-frameusers.com
> Send administrative questions to listadmin at frameusers.com