Preparing the InDesign template to receive structured content

Owned by Olivier Grenet
May 06, 2020
4 min read

This document will instruct you how to prepare a document to receive content in the web-to-print web interface.

Once the “reference” objects have been set up (see https://crossmedia.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/WD/pages/10849256 ), the graphic designers can now prepare the templates in Indesign to receive the content.

Using fields in InDesign templates

In these steps, the graphic designer will use the Wedia tagging palette to map the content to graphical frames, images and text boxes.

 

3 steps are needed :

  1. Tag the text frames

  2. Tag the image frames

  3. Group the related frames to designate a content object.

The tagging palette

This will show a new Wedia Tagging palette :

 

Tagging a text frame or text part

Tagging a text frame is easy : select the text frame or text part, choose the field from the database that will replace that content, and select the optional styles the user will be able to choose from.

 

  • Select the desired text or the complete frame

  • Select Context to select the appropriate repository and the desired Field name, and click “TAG” at the bottom.

 

Offering a choice of Styles to the end user

Sometime, you want to give the end user the option to change the paragraph and character style among a limited choice of predefined styles.

To do so, with the current tag selected, display the paragraph or character style palette, and right-click on the style name you want to add, and use the new “Add style to tag list” option :

 

The palette will now show up available styles :

 

Showing tags in your InDesign page structure : tags are actual XML tags from InDesign standard behaviour. You can display them using the standard ways of InDesign : the [ ] that who up in preview mode.

The tags will also show up in the Edit in layout popup :

Tagging an image

The same process can be applied to tagging an image frame :

  • Select the image frame to tag

  • Select the field name of type “image”

  • click tag

 

Grouping fields together to create a “content object”

Wedia uses the Indesign “group” feature to group related text and image frames of the same “object”.

This is a very important concept : a single article for example will have a title text frame, a body text frame and an image frame. To instruct Wedia these frames belong to the same “article” object, we use the standard “group” feature of InDesign to group these frames together.

 

Multiple content target can be present in one page. To instruct InDesign which frames are related to a unique content object, we simply use the “group” feature of Indesign to group the objects altogether :

 

These groups will now show up in the web-to-print interface in “pink” group, the user can click on to flow some content in each field :

 

Exporting the finished template to Wedia

Once done, the finished template must be exported into Wedia. We use a special type of file, the .wedia file (see https://crossmedia.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/WD/pages/10947718 ) to create an archive with all the needed links and fonts.

This is a new export option that can be found in File > Export :

 

The select the Wedia file type :

This Wedia file can now be used to create a new template in Wedia :

Use the Distributed Marketing menu to create a new Template > Print template :

Then click on the New button :

 

And upload the .wedia file into the Print file template :