Exporting to HTML

[Loopy07@adobeforums.com]

How do I go about saving/exporting an InDesign CS file as HTML?

I know.. I know...
It's not a good idea, but I have no choice in the matter.

In version 2 of InDesign it was just a matter of going to FILE > EXPORT > SAVE AS TYPE > HTML. Does CS not offer this any longer?

Thanks for any help!
Loop

[mikewitherell_at_jetsetcom_dot_net]

No, they took it out of CS in favor of File > Package for Golive; ostensibly so that you would never figure it out.

Mike Witherell in Washington DC

[JeremyDeal@adobeforums.com]

How lame is that? So now what, we are forced to buy GoLive? No thanks-I am already trained in Dreamweaver.

Does anyone know of a plug-in or filter to purchase or download so that we can save InDesignCS files as HTML?

[pjredman@adobeforums.com]

Depending on what you're after you might be able to use XML for this. Create XML tags with HTML tag names, map them to text styles in your document and export as XML. You'll undoubtedly need to edit the resulting HTML/XML but it actually works pretty well.

Phil Redman

[Jim_Oblak@adobeforums.com]

Don't take Phil's suggestion as timidly as he presented it.

you might be able to use XML




Own it Phil! ;)

XML is the only way that you can pull structure out of InDesign CS for re-use in HTML.

You could export all stories as RTF but this creates an unstructured mess. You might as well create the HTML from scratch if you don't want to try the Package for GoLive/XML route.

It's an excellent idea to define HTML tags as XML elements within InDesign. I've been stupidly renaming tags after I export.

[JeremyDeal@adobeforums.com]

Thanks guys, but I need a friendlier solution. Can you point me to a plug-in company? (They seem to have one for everything) hehe, and I have no problem buying it!

[Jim_Oblak@adobeforums.com]

The friendliest solution would be to continue to use InDesign 2 if you found that to work well for you.

[pjredman@adobeforums.com]

I'm not aware of any third party plug-in for HTML export. I don't believe it exists (yet).

Phil Redman

[JeremyDeal@adobeforums.com]

Jim I would agree except our company upgraded and has been using InDesignCS extensively since its introduction. We already have hundreds of newsletters, fliers and print media that is in the new CS format from our art services department.

Now all those print materials need converted for use on our company web site and we are trying to get away from using PDF's. AS you know Adobe eliminated the option to save InDesignCS files backwards to version 2.0 (even if none of the new CS features are used), so going back to using 2.0 is not an option because we have no way to open the hundreds of CS files.

I see a huge paycheck for the guy that creates a HTML plug-in for InDesignCS! Why couldn't they leave a good thing alone? The HTML export in 2.0 worked awesome. They should have added the "package for GoLive" and left the "export to HTML" as a second option ...but then that wouldn't force users to buy Adobe GoLive now would it?

[pjredman@adobeforums.com]

"The HTML export in 2.0 worked awesome"

It's my feeling that Adobe got so many complaints about the HTML export in 2.0 that they dropped in favor of Package for GoLive. Granted, if you don't use GoLive this is a step backward, but given the crummy performance of the 2.0 HTML export it's a pretty small step.

I still recommend XML as the most automated and flexible approach to HTML export in CS.

Phil Redman

[Jim_Oblak@adobeforums.com]

While an HTML export plugin may be nice for the smaller user, your comment about 'hundreds of newsletters, fliers and print media' further makes you an excellent candidate for the use of XML or PDF. I could not imagine managing the discordant HTML that does not share the same CSS and layout between all those pages.

You might try creating PDFs and then exporting HTML from Acrobat 6 Professional. This achieves the same level of retch found in ID2's HTML export. ;)

If you are really daring and serve your own web site, check out the server applications that turn PDF documents into HTML on the fly. Much of this is open source, using ghostscript.

You could also export JPG from IDCS and drag those JPGs into a web page.

[JeremyDeal@adobeforums.com]

"...your comment about 'hundreds of newsletters, fliers and print media' further makes you an excellent candidate for the use of XML..."
You might have a valid point there. Our current version of Dreamweaver (4.0)doesn't do any more than insert the XML as an invisible object. However DreamweaverMX has improved XML features and its being shipped to our company now. You sound very pro-XML...what would you recommend to a XML newbie to learn more about the subject? As of right now I cant even play with it to figure it out on my own.

"...You might try creating PDFs and then exporting HTML from Acrobat 6 Professional. This achieves the same level of retch found in ID2's HTML export..."
Is the HTML feature available in our full version of Acrobat 5?, or do we need to upgrade to 6?

"...If you are really daring and serve your own web site, check out the server applications that turn PDF documents into HTML on the fly. Much of this is open source, using ghostscript..."
We do serve and run our own website so this sounds like the best solution yet! Tell me more, tell me more! Any links or books or sites you can point me too would be extremely helpfull!

P.S. - thanks for taking the time to really brainstorm over your answers!

[pjredman@adobeforums.com]

Here's the XML to HTML process in brief:

1) Go to the tags palette and create tags with HTML names like "h1" and "p". You need an HTML equivalent tag for each of the structural element types in your InDesign document, like headings and body text. Note that the XML tags list can be saved and loaded by other document. You only need to create it once !

2) In the Tags palette go to the menu and select "Map styles to tags". In the dialog select an HTML tag to map to each of your paragraph and character styles (you used those--right?). Anything that has a mapping will be included in the HTML (XML) output. Hit OK and the document will be tagged with the HTML markup.

3) In the Structure View menu select Add Untagged Items. This will create tags for graphics.

4) Export the file as XML making sure that you choose to include graphics in the output.

5) Open the resulting XML in a text editor. You'll need to change the Root tag to an HTML tag and add Head and Body tags. Also replace Figure tags with IMG tags and delete and Story and Article tags. This can all be done with find/replace in the text editor. I've got these scripted in my text editor so I just hit a button and the script does them all at once.

That's it in a nutshell. Depending on what your content looks like you may need to re-arrange some things. Note that in the XML structure view you can do a fair amount of tag editing, adding attributes etc. This really gets fun when you add scripting to do things like automatically add alternative text descriptions to the graphics.

The next step beyond this approach is to apply XML tags as above and use XSLT to transform the HTML output to HTML. This allows for much more flexibility and automation.

Have fun,

Phil Redman

[r_harvey@adobeforums.com]

I see a huge paycheck for the guy that creates a HTML plug-in for InDesignCS!




If you don't mind an extra step on the way, it might not be that difficult. A small utility could convert InDesign Tagged Text into HTML, discarding all sorts of things it doesn't understand. The utility could also convert from HTML to Tagged Text.

A project got me started writing the utility in C, but I stopped. I realized that you could get the text into MS Word (sigh), and export as RTF for InDesign. For HTML export, you can use the "MS Office HTML Filter" (available somewhere on their Web site) to strip-out the ugly/unnecessary MS tags.

[Jim_Oblak@adobeforums.com]

Is the HTML feature available in our full version of Acrobat 5?, or do
we need to upgrade to 6?




I do not see the option in Acrobat 5 but it is available in Acrobat 6 Professional. I am not sure if Acrobat 6 Standard has the save as HTML option.

Any links or books or sites you can point me too would be extremely helpfull!




Here are some PDF2HTML open source server applications:
<http://pdftohtml.sourceforge.net/>
<http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~clock/twibright/pdf2html/>

There are plenty of other PDF-HTML converters out there (some commercial applications, including Adobe's own server). Googling produces many options.

The problem with web servers actively converting PDF to HTML on the fly is that you need server resources to do this. This, like any other served application, requires RAM and processing.

I would not discount simply posting PDF files online. I have yet to encounter a computer that does not have Acrobat Reader (now Adobe Reader) on it.

[Alfred_Tow@adobeforums.com]

Any PDF to HTML converters that is HTML friendly?

I got the whole Adobe CS Suite and use Indesign and GoLive. But this packaging for GoLive thing has confused the hell out of me. For example I open the "packaged Indesign" thing in GoLive and I can't even save it in HTML. What the hell?

XML is complicated without a visual step by step guide.

So that leaves me with this step: Indesign to PDF to HTML.

So any recommendations for a simple PDF to HTML converter that retains bold, italics, and don't add a
after each line like the columns in the PDF document.

Any help is appreciated.

Alfred

Thanks
Alfred

[Jim_Oblak@adobeforums.com]

If you got the whole Adobe CS Suite, would you also have gotten Acrobat 6 Pro? This will take your PDF and export HTML.

[Alfred_Tow@adobeforums.com]

DOH, the answer was in front of my eyes! ....thanks!
:)