Any external IDML viewer

Question

Starting with InDesign CS 5, there is a new format called IDML that defines the document that InDesign will display. I am looking for a way to view this format without opening InDesign (which is too heavy). The best solution would be an applet / flash library / something that can display content on a web page (in fact, even the generated image can be an interesting starting point)

I know that there is a (paid) Java library for reading / writing this format. Can it be expanded to develop a viewer?

Answer 1

IDMLlib can retrieve any information inside IDML. You are not limited in any way to turn this information into anything else. For example, you can use java2d to render the distribution from IDML, or you can use the PDF library to create a PDF from an IDML document. To answer your question: Yes, IDMLlib provides the basis for developing a viewer for IDML.

Best

Andreas

ps IDML format is available since CS4

edit:

iText will be one PDF library, another - www.pdflib.com, which is an extremely fast library for creating any PDF file, but is also commercial. In terms of “what’s possible,” pdflib can process a lot without any hassle, but things that will be very difficult to do are things like soft shadows, mixed images. You will also need additional software to convert EPS to something (possibly a PDF) that pdflib can work with, since EPS files are not supported by pdflib. Fonts can also be showstopper if your idml document uses Mac fonts (Font suitcases, .dfont). All other fonts are supported very well (Truetype fonts, OpenType fonts, PostscriptFonts). I don’t think it will be possible to create a viewer who can make each document 100% accurate, but it will be possible to create a viewer who can make a lot of documents very accurate. But, as always, the mileage may vary, it would be best to get an estimate from both libraries and try.

Answer 2

Do you want to move from IDML to the Web?

I am also in a similar situation. I think InDesign Server has the features we need, but it seems prohibitively expensive. If your IDML is consistent, you can write your own process. This is what I am doing right now.

Answer 3

I do the same thing as Michael. I store IDML documents in the Jackrabbit repository, so every single XML file is opened through the Java REST API.

IDML is then loaded into the FLEX application, which does the actual rendering. I also use a highly modified version of the excellent TinyTLF library written by Paul Taylor, in which I implemented most of the IDML text markup as a separate IDML visualization tool. Maybe someday I rewrote it in HTML5 / Javascript.

Answer 4

I lingered on the same problem for a long time, and I realized that this was impossible very difficult. Using IDML, you cannot easily render a document as you can display it with the original INDD file.

This is due to the fact that the IDML file is a representation, not a model, it does not contain enough information for proper visualization.

The problem that I am locked in was that the IDML file had text + graphics. It was impossible to do it right, since all the text frames pointed to the same story, and in IDML there is no way to determine how much text fits into one text frame. Thus, in principle, you cannot understand where to place the image, i.e. After how much text.

As for IDMLLib, I tried the evaluation product, and these people have just provided something like an SDK with which you can extract all the information from IDML. This information is not enough!