Open 1card.indt from the Project 1 folder (Figure 4.1).

Figure 4.1. The sample business card is already structured and tagged. It is ready for you to import the XML data.

Display the Structure pane and the Tags panel.

Select View > Structure > Show Structure.

Show Tag Markers and Tagged Frames.

Select View > Structure > Show Tagged Frames.

Select Show Text Snippets from the Structure pane menu.

Before we go any further, take a moment to study the layout of the structured business card on the screen. Pay special attention to the colorful brackets and frames around the XML placeholder text. Later in the chapter we take you through the process step by step and explain in detail the ins and outs of constructing a structured layout. For the time being, sit back and enjoy the magic that’s about to explode on your screen.

Select the dataroot element in the Structure pane (Figure 4.2).

Figure 4.2. Always select the root element before importing the XML.

Select File > Import XML.

There are three places in InDesign where you can invoke the import XML command:

Don’t worry. These commands all perform the same task; pick the one you prefer or use the one most convenient at the time.

Select employees.xml from the Project 1 folder.

Click the Show XML Import Options (Figure 4.3) checkbox to select it. After your XML structure is built, this checkbox should be your default selection.

Figure 4.3. In most structured layouts you’ll want to access the XML Import Options.

XML Import Woes

Do not rush the task of importing your XML; this is where the most common errors occur (Figure 4.4). If something does not look the way you expect it to, or does not look the same as it appears in the screen shots, STOP. Take a breath and check the Structure pane first. You may have inadvertently imported the XML into a child element instead of the root (see Chapter 1 if you don’t know what that means).

Figure 4.4. Here you can see XML content imported incorrectly into a child element. It must be deleted and reimported.

If this happens, and you catch the error immediately, just Undo. Otherwise select the errant content in the XML tree and trash it. In most cases, you cannot use badly imported XML for dynamic content. Just start over and remember to select the root before importing the XML the next time.

Click Open.

When the XML Import Options dialog (Figure 4.5) appears, turn on the following onscreen selections:

Figure 4.5. It’s essential that you understand how the XML Import Option dialog affects the import of the XML content. For a full description of these options, see Chapter 1.

Turn off all the rest.

Click OK.

Open the element for the second employee in the Structure pane.

Click and drag the icon for this employee’s element and drop it on the tagged text frame on your layout (Figure 4.8). Watch out for two potential errors here:

Figure 4.8. Each employees parent element contains five child elements: Efirstname, Elastname, Etitle, and so on. Dragging the parent icon over the structured layout causes InDesign to swap the existing child elements with the one selected.

The information from the second employee has now replaced all the information from the first (Figure 4.9). Notice the following:

Figure 4.9. The second record completely replaces the first and adopts the formatting, too. It’s like magic.

Drag the first employees element back to the layout.

So far, we have demonstrated that the relationship between the structured layout and the XML is dynamic. Because the employee information is stored in identically named fields, you can replace any data in the layout with a similar record from the Structure pane.

We’re sure you are thinking right about now, “This is great for the first layout, but we need to make six identical business cards!”

Here’s where you had better hold onto your hosiery.

Create a new page from A-Master (Figure 4.10).

Figure 4.10. Dragging the A-Master icon to the Document pages area of the Pages panel creates a new page with features identical to page 1. The master page contains the company logo, address, and a text frame needed to make the next business card.

Page 2 features the logo, company address, and a text frame all generated by the master page. If you cannot see the edges of this text frame, select View > Show Frame Edges.

Drag the second employees element from the Structure pane into the empty text frame on page 2.

Observe the employee’s name on page 2 of your layout, as seen back in Figure 4.6.

Drag the element of the first employee from the Structure pane to the text frame on page 2.

We’re sure when you see the first employee’s name and info replace the data on page 2, you’ll think, “Hey, I just made two cards for the first employee!”

But you’d be wrong, bucko.

Navigate to page 1.

Page 1 is blank.

Drag the first employee element to the blank text frame on page 1.

The first employee’s info reappears on page 1.

Navigate to page 2.

Page 2 is blank.

Delete page 2.

Navigate to page 1.

Select the text frame on page 1 with the Selection tool.

Observe the text frame’s out port.

Drag dataroot to the text frame on page 1.

Did you notice that the color of the main text frame changed?

Select the text frame on page 1 with the Selection tool.

Create a new page based on A-Master as we did in Figure 4.10.

Click the out port from the text frame on page 1.

Display page 2.

Shift-click the loaded text icon on the empty text frame on page 2 to autoflow (Figure 4.12).

Figure 4.12. Watch for the solid serpentine arrow when you hold the Shift key, indicating that the XML will autoflow into your structured layout.

Open 6cards.indt from the Project 1 folder.

Select View > Show Text Threads.

Make sure all the Structure markers are turned on.

Select any of the tagged text frames on the layout (Figure 4.14).

Figure 4.14. This is one of the possible ways to lay out a press-ready structure. The text frames are linked together from left to right and then down. You could also go top to bottom and then across, it’s up to you. The XML will work either way.

Select the dataroot element.

Import employees.xml.

Observe the XML Import Options dialog. The checkboxes used for Lesson 4-1 should still be selected. If so, click OK.

After the XML import is complete, the first employee’s name and information appears in the first card. The data from the remaining five employees appears in the Structure pane but not in your layout. Why?

The color of the tagged frame should give you a hint. Notice how the color of the text frame is the same color as the tag for the employees element? Although there are frames ready for each of the six employees, the structure in the layout is tagged to allow only one element into it at a time. Knowing what you know now, have you figured out how to fix the problem? Right, it’s the same way you fixed the single-card layout in Lesson 4-4.

Drag the dataroot element from the Structure pane onto the tagged text frame.

Select File > New > Document.

Set up the document with the specifications appearing in Figure 4.16. Click OK.

Figure 4.16. Create a new document with these specifications.

If the Tags panel is not visible, select Window > Tags to display the panel.

Select New Tag from the Tags panel menu (Figure 4.17).

Figure 4.17. InDesign allows you to create, edit, and delete tag names through the Tags panel.

You can also create tags by clicking the New Tag button at the bottom of the Tags panel. Use the button when you want to create tags quickly and you don’t care what color is assigned to it. Pressing the button doesn’t open the New Tag dialog, so double-click on the tag name to access the Tag Option dialog for editing the tag name and color.

Type Efirstname into the New Tag dialog. You can use the sequential color selected by InDesign or choose from the Color pull-down menu (Figure 4.18). Click OK.

Figure 4.18. InDesign assigns colors sequentially from the Color drop-down list. Feel free to change these color assignments. The colors have no effect on the XML or the structure.

The Efirstname tag appears in the Tags panel.

Create a tag for Elastname.

Double-click the root tag in the Tags palette.

The Tag Options dialog appears.

Change the tag name to dataroot.

Note the case and spelling as you type.

Click OK.

Select Load Tags from the Tags panel menu (Figure 4.19).

Figure 4.19. By loading tag names from existing InDesign documents or the actual XML itself, you will avoid all the pitfalls of misspellings and case sensitivities. If the XML file is available, it’s always the first choice.

Select employees.xml.

You could also select 1card.indt or 6cards.indt. Because these InDesign templates already have the identical XML structure you’re looking for, you can obtain the needed tags from them as well.

Click Open.

The Tags panel is populated by all the tag names used in the XML file (Figure 4.20).

Figure 4.20. Tag names are listed in alphabetical order, not in the order in which they appear in the XML structure.

InDesign assigns colors for the tag names sequentially from the default color list.

Display the A-Master.

Create a text frame within the visible margins (Figure 4.21).

Figure 4.21. By drawing a text frame on the master page, you are creating a target you’ll need for autoflowing the XML content later.

Display page 1.

Command-Shift-click to override the master text frame on page 1.

The text frame should display a bounding box and in and out ports, indicating that it has been overridden.

Insert the Text cursor in the frame and create text placeholders for your XML content (Figure 4.22).

Figure 4.22. What you type for the XML placeholders doesn’t matter as much as how you tag them. You could just as easily use A, B, C, D... or 1, 2, 3, 4.

What you type is unimportant. You can use any text you want for the placeholders; here is what we used: First Last, Title, Phone, Email. Use single hard returns or spaces to break lines or separate placeholders.

In the last line of the text frame after the Email placeholder, press Return/Enter to insert a hard return.

Although you may not be in the habit of normally doing so, you must add a single hard return after the last item: Email. The extra hard return at the end of the business card ensures that each record occupies its own distinct card.

The placement and spacing you saw in the sample business cards were specified by styles using exact font and paragraph formatting. To duplicate that look, you will need similar styles of your own. Luckily, you can save some time by importing them from one of the templates we’ve already explored.

Display the Paragraph Styles panel.

Select Load All Text Styles... from the Paragraph Styles panel menu (Figure 4.23).

Figure 4.23. There’s no point in wasting time setting up Paragraph styles when you can load them from an existing template.

Select 1card.indt in the Open a File dialog. Click Open.

The Load Styles dialog appears.

Make sure all the style names are checked. Click OK.

The styles from 1card.indt appear in the Paragraph Styles panel.

Apply paragraph styles to your placeholders that match their names. Because there are no “First” or “Last” styles, apply the Employee style to the first line.

The placeholder formatting should now match 1card.indt (Figure 4.24).

Figure 4.24. The basic layout is complete but lacks its XML structure.

Select the Text tool.

Select the word First. Be careful not to select the space between the words First and Last.

Click Efirstname in the Tags panel (Figure 4.26).

Figure 4.26. Careful, careful! Mind how you tag that element. Tagging seems simple enough, but plenty of errors can be caused during this process.

Switch to the Selection tool and click the text frame.

The text frame is tagged with the Story tag (Figure 4.27).

Figure 4.27. See, we told you! InDesign demonstrates it has a mind of its own sometimes—it tagged text frame with the Story element. If you had missed this error, you wouldn’t realize something was wrong until later. When you try to import the XML, InDesign would ignore your placeholders altogether because Story is not part of the structure.

Whoa! Story is not one of the elements from the XML file, so where did it come from? The answer: InDesign created it. If you remember from Lesson 4-4, the text frame was tagged with the employees element. Because you did not tag the text frame yourself, InDesign did it for you. And instead of using one of the existing tags, it created one of its own.

Unfortunately, this presumptuous bit of creativity is totally unacceptable, and for good reason. By using Story, which is not an element in your XML file, InDesign has broken the structure. If you tried to import XML at this moment it would fail.

But don’t worry, there’s an easy fix.

Select the Story element in the Structure pane (Figure 4.28).

Figure 4.28. To fix the text frame, first click on the Story element in the Structure pane.

Click employees in the Tags panel (Figure 4.29).

Figure 4.29. Click the employees element in the Tags panel to rename the Story tag in the Structure pane.

Apply the appropriate tags to the remaining placeholders.

All placeholders are tagged properly (Figure 4.30).

Figure 4.30. On the left you can see what correctly tagged placeholders look like. To the right you can see tags enclosing spaces and hard returns alike. The simplest fix is to select the whole mess, untag it, and start over from scratch.

Select Map Tags to Styles from the Tags panel menu, or the Structure pane menu (Figure 4.32).

Figure 4.32. You can access the mapping feature from the Structure pane or the Tags panel.

The Map Tags to Styles dialog appears.

Click Map by Name.

This option automatically pairs tags to styles when their names match (Figure 4.33).

Figure 4.33. With a little foresight you can automate the mapping procedure by naming your styles after the XML tags or vice versa. As always, spelling and case matter.

All the placeholder tags are matched except for Efirstname and Elastname. There are no styles named for these tags. Instead, map the Employee Paragraph style to each. (You could get away with mapping the Employee style to one or the other, but we’d rather be safe.)

Match the Employee style to the Efirstname tag in the Map Tags to Styles dialog (Figure 4.34).

Figure 4.34. Tags that don’t have a style match can be assigned to any Paragraph or Character style in the list. There are no limitations or rules here. Go ahead and create a style for each tag or assign many tags to one style. It’s up to you.

Click OK.

Select dataroot in the Structure pane.

Import employees.xml.

In the XML Import Options dialog, select only the following checkboxes:

Click OK.

The XML content should replace your placeholders as in Lesson 4-1.

Drag dataroot to the text frame.

Load the overset text.

Create a new page from the A-Master.

Autoflow the text into the master text frame on page 2.

Create a New Document with the specifications shown in Figure 4.35.

Figure 4.35. These specs create the 6-up layout.

Display A-Master.

Select Layout > Create Guides.

The Create Guides dialog appears.

Create row guides from the specifications shown in Figure 4.36.

Figure 4.36. Create Guides is a great timesaver for setting up multiple ruler guides. Notice the options for fitting the guides to Margins, or to Page, and to Remove Existing Ruler Guides.

Select the Text tool.

Draw a text frame in the area defined by the guides for the first card structure.

Switch to the Selection tool.

Click the out port of the text frame.

Option-drag (Alt-drag) (semi-autoflow) a new text frame in the second column, first row (Figure 4.37).

Figure 4.37. Hold the Option (Alt) key to access the dotted serpentine arrow of semi-autoflow. This technique saves some time by reloading the text frame icon automatically after drawing a new frame.

Option-drag (Alt-drag) text frames in the remaining rows and columns.

You now have six linked master text frames.

Display page 1.

Override the first master text frame.

Repeat Lessons 4-8, 4-9, and 4-10 to create a structured layout in this text frame.

The layout is ready for XML (Figure 4.38).

Figure 4.38. The structured press-ready layout awaits the XML.

Select dataroot in the Structure pane.

Import employees.xml.

In the XML Import Options dialog, select only the following checkboxes:

Click OK.

Drag dataroot to the text frame.

Create a new document as in Lesson 4-6.

Select the Text tool.

Draw individual text frames for each element on your business card. You will need one for the employee’s name, title, phone, and email address. Remember to make the frames large enough to hold the longest name, title, and so on.

Type placeholder text into each of your text frames.

Load all text styles from 1card.indt as in Lesson 4-8.

Apply the styles to each placeholder as appropriate.

Load the XML tags names from the employees.xml file, as in Lesson 4-7C.

Switch to the Selection tool.

Select the frame containing the title placeholder.

Click Etitle in the Tags panel.

The frame containing the title changes color, indicating it is tagged for the Etitle element.

Tag the frames containing the phone and email placeholders as appropriate.

Select the Text tool.

Select the placeholder for the first name.

Click Efirstname in the Tags panel.

The placeholder displays tag brackets for the Efirstname element.

Tag the last name placeholder with Elastname.

The layout is completely tagged (Figure 4.42), but we’re not quite done yet.

Figure 4.42. The frames-based layout looks similar to the text-based method, except that the tags are applied to the frames instead of the text.

Save file as mycardtest1.indd.

Select the Root element in the Structure pane.

Click dataroot in the Tags panel (Figure 4.44).

Figure 4.44. Changing the name of an element can be done quickly and painlessly within the Structure pane.

The Root element is renamed dataroot. One problem solved.

Select the Story element in the Structure pane.

Drag the Story element to the top of the list, just below dataroot (Figure 4.45).

Figure 4.45. It takes a calm hand, keen eye, and practice to be able to move critical elements within the structure correctly. Always check the results before you proceed to the next task. As you have already seen, the success of your XML workflow depends upon it.

The Story tag and the placeholders for Efirstname and Elastname have moved to the top of the list.

Select the Story element in the Structure pane.

Click employees in the Tags panel.

The Story element has been renamed employees.

Select dataroot in the Structure pane.

Import employees.xml. Select only the following import options:

Select Undo from the Edit menu.

The layout returns to the previous state: The XML content is purged from the Structure pane and the generic First and Last name placeholders are restored.

Drag the Etitle element into the employees element in the Structure pane (Figure 4.47).

Figure 4.47. Creating the proper structure may take several steps. Here we dragged the Etitle element into the employees element (left). It appears in the wrong position of the structure (middle). So, we move it to its proper location (right).

The Etitle element appears as a child element of employees.

Very important: Note that the actual placement of the placeholder on the layout has not changed.

Drag the Etitle element below Elastname in the Structure pane.

Etitle now appears in its proper location within the XML structure.

Repeat steps 2 and 3 with the Ephone and Eemail elements.

The placeholder structure now mimics the desired XML structure.

Select File > Save.

Let’s try importing the XML file again:

Select dataroot and import employees.xml.

Drag A-Master to the Page panel to create a new page.

Display page 2.

Drag the employees element for the second employee to page 2.

All the information for the second employee appears in a single text frame (Figure 4.48).

Figure 4.48. When you try to flow one of the other records into the layout InDesign doesn’t clone the individual structured frames from page 1. And there’s no way to make it do so short of scripting or third-party plug-ins.

Now you know why it’s called the wrong way. Without scripting or third-party plug-ins, there’s no way (that we know of) to get InDesign to create multiple pages automatically from the structured layout as it appears after step 4 in Lesson 4-17. It is possible to create all six cards, just not automatically as you did in our other method.

This is what you have to do to automate the process to build multiples:

Select File > Revert.

The XML content disappears from the Structure pane and the tagged placeholders revert to their appearance after Lesson 4-17, step 5.

Select page 1 in the Pages panel.

Select Duplicate Spread from the Pages panel menu (Figure 4.49).

Figure 4.49. By using the existing structured layout on page 1 to create a new page, instead of the A-Master, you can get around the cloning problem.

A duplicate page appears in the panel, which includes all the placeholders as in page 1.

Observe the Structure pane (Figure 4.50).

Figure 4.50. After duplicating page 1, as you can see here, an unwelcome surprise is waiting for you in the Structure pane. For some unknown reason, the Etitle, Ephone and Eemail elements from page 2 are nested within the employees element on page 1.

STOP! Do you see what just happened? When you duplicated page 1, InDesign did as you asked and then promptly screwed up the perfectly good structure. This is the real kicker: If you look at page 2, you see the exact same placeholders as on page 1, which is great. But a glance at the Structure pane tells you that the page 2 title, phone, and email placeholders were incorporated into the page 1 employees element! Egads!

You know enough about XML by now to know that this won’t fly. If you don’t fix this problem, the imported XML will ignore the title, phone, and email placeholders on page 2 as it did after Lesson 4-16, step 4.

Here’s how you can once again rescue this errant structure:

Select one Etitle, Ephone, and Eemail element from the Structure pane. Hold Shift to select consecutive elements, or Cmd (Ctrl) to select non-consecutive elements.

Drag the selected elements below Elastname in the second employees element in the Structure pane (Figure 4.51).

Figure 4.51. Although it’s an added step, it’s easy to Shift-select all three elements and drag them down to where they belong. You will have to do the same manual troubleshooting for any new page you want to create.

The three elements now appear as child elements in the correct position in the structure (Figure 4.52).

Figure 4.52. Finally, both pages display properly structured layouts that are ready for XML.

Reposition the placeholders in your layout; see Figure 4.53 for one suggestion.

Figure 4.53. Once you’ve created a valid structure, have fun with your floating frames. This screenshot gives you one suggestion.

You can put the placeholders literally anywhere on the card as long as the elements stay in the proper order within the Structure pane.

Now you can import the XML file:

Select dataroot and import employees.xml.

The XML imports properly into all the cards no matter where you positioned the placeholders. In fact, each of the six cards can feature individualized designs.