CreativePro Forum

Return to Member Forum

• Author
  Posts
• • January 25, 2017 at 11:00 am #91581
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    I learned a lot from Anne Marie’s Lynda.com tutorials, but one thing I’m hung up on is importing content. Micosoft Word just isn’t working for me.

    I discovered that if I use eCanCrusher to open my project, I can paste an xhtml file directly into it. So I took one of my Dreamweaver files, changed the .php extension to .xhtml and added the appropriate header, then pasted it into my epub. However, I don’t know what to do next; how do I sync it with InDesign or even view/access it with InDesign?

    I then created a new book and clicked the + (“Add Document”). I navigated to an XHTML file, but I can’t add it; it’s all grayed out.

    So what’s the secret to ignoring Word and just adding XHTML documents directly to InDesign? Can anyone explain the steps or point me to a tutorial?

    Thanks.

  • January 25, 2017 at 12:11 pm #91587
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    InDesign does not currently import HTML. There is some discussion of this here: https://creativepro.com/issues/issue-55-html-indesign

  • January 25, 2017 at 12:12 pm #91588
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    I just realized I’ve got it backwards; if I use eCanCrusher to open an epub, then I’m modifying the epub, NOT the master InDesign file. So how do I access my .html files in InDesign books or projects? Actually, I did modify an .xhtml file via eCanCrusher, and the modification didn’t even show up in the revised epub. ???

  • January 25, 2017 at 12:47 pm #91593
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    Wow, I’m confused. InDesign doesn’t allow you to import HTML files – but it does contain HTML files, right? And, if so, then there must be a way to access them and use a simple copy and paste routine to transfer data. In one of her videos, Ann Marie recommended the purchase of BBEdit to do search and replace operations on HTML files in InDesign. But I can’t remember how she accessed these files.

  • January 25, 2017 at 12:55 pm #91594
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    No, InDesign only exports HTML and EPUB. There is no way to import HTML into InDesign at this time (CC 2017). I have talked with Adobe about this in detail and I hope that someday they will add those features! :-)

  • January 26, 2017 at 4:51 am #91603
    Kai Rübsamen

    Member

    David Blomstrom: I’ve the feeling, that you do not understand what is going on here! So:

    1. InDesign is a program for layout, not for HTML by default
    2. You can do some things in InDesign and EXPORT the content as html or epub, you cannot realy IMPORT HTML as complete pages.
    3. While InDesign generates good html, it creates poor css
    4. You can open the exported epub in different programs. Some are only for viewing, some are for editing
    5. BBEdit is a texteditor, not an epubeditor! So everyhting must be done by hand!
    6. If you crack up a epub with eCan-Crusher, you can add your xhtml-files, BUT you must also set a reference in the content.opf-file!
    7. If you use programs like SIGIL or Calibre, those entries will be set automatically

    btw: If you work with Dreamweaver, there is no need of creating EPUBs with InDesign. You can import the files directly e.g. in SIGIL and create the xml-structure for the book.

    Kai

  • January 26, 2017 at 10:15 am #91613
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    Wow, great comments! They really help me fill in the blanks.

    I watched Ann Marie Concepcion’s series of tutorial videos, and they were very helpful, but there are still pieces of the puzzle that I don’t understand. I purchased BBEdit precisely because she recommended it, and I have used it to edit epub files.

    I can see that InDesign is a very sophisticated software program that does some great things, but it seems to sacrifice user-friendliness in the process. So I have to decide if I want to continue learning to work with InDesign or learn how to create epubs in a way that gives me more control over the HTML. In the long run, I’ll probably have to learn both (not to mention iBooks Author).

    Thanks again for the helpful tips.

  • January 26, 2017 at 10:47 am #91616
    Kai Rübsamen

    Member

    > So I have to decide if I want to continue learning to work with InDesign or learn how to create epubs in a way that gives me more control over the HTML.

    No, this isn’t the question. Most books exists already in a print format and the goal is, to transport those well formatted text to html. So, if your book is already in InDesign, stay in InDesign. But if your text is HTML or Word or in Pages, it is maybe better to work with other programs.

    Whatever your decision is: Learn to understand the process and built your own workflow!

    One last example: InDesign generates wrong CSS for images > it set width and height attributes and some readers will skew the images. So you need first those readers, second you must have the knowledge, what is going wrong here and how to fix it (maybe in BBEdit).

    While it might take 5 hours to see AMs training, it will surely take much longer, to understand the whole process ;-)

    Kai

• Author
  Posts